


Bound To Each Other's Hearts (Caught, Torn, and Pulled Apart)

by VeteranKlaus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, And they're side characters, Dead Klaus Hargreeves, Haunting, If Klaus gets to fuck a ghost so does Dave, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Spiritual, The Hargreeves Aren't Related
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23527885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Searching for some peace to retire his life to, Dave Katz moves to an old house settled upon the cliffs of a beach that no one else has been able to live in for more than a year. It feels like home to him, and the strange man with the tendency to wander the cliffs and the beach feels even more like home.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 154
Kudos: 197





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh, a new fic, is anyone surprised?  
> Anywho, I'm really excited for this and the plot - thank you to everyone who helped me iron it out! And I hope y'all like it too!

_March, 1902._

Klaus settles his hands upon his hips, leaning back on the heels of his feet so that he can gaze out at the house erected in front of him. It is a small thing that resembles vaguely a barn; with neglected weeds sprouting around it, ivy crawling up the pale blue wooden walls and its rounded-roof, and it sits upon a foundation of rocks growing moss. The stairs leading up to the porch look battered by shoes tracking up and down them for years, and some of the paint on the pillars is peeling. If he twists to the right and peers out beyond the house, he can see an even more battered looking shed, built up by hand from a previous owner, only just surviving the harsh winds and storms that have been occurring lately.

Beyond the house, beyond the little shed, the ground begins to grow narrower. The ground becomes more rough and uneven, grass windswept backwards, and then it cuts off just as the ground does to give way to a sheer drop somewhere around one-hundred and forty feet, down to the outcropping of sharp rocks below, where waves clash and pound relentlessly against them.

The smell of salt water is strong here, carried on with the sound of rolling waves far beneath their feet. Compared to the smoke and heat of busy, newly industrialised cities, all closely packed and vaguely smelling of piss and death, with people bustling around in hand-me-downs, coughing spots of red into the palms of their hand; this isolated, bare little house is a welcome shift in scenery. A very welcome shift.

He inhales deeply, letting the air fill up every crevice in his lungs and lets the sound of clapping waves wash over him.

Behind him he hears the car they came in begin to roll back down the non-existent road. With a grin spreading nearly from ear to ear, Klaus spins around to declare, “it’s perfect.”

David, crouching to lift up their two bags and the two of groceries, twisting his hand around the straps, lifts his head up. A smile twitches his lips, eyes flicking over Klaus’ shoulder to stare at the house – their house. “Yes,” he agrees. “It is. Well, we’ll need to go buy some paint, and start weeding the place out, and I’m just as well taking down the boathouse and rebuilding it-“

“Alright, alright, I get it.” Klaus cuts him off with the wave of his hand. “She might not be pretty, but the view sure is.”

“You’re right about that, sunshine.” When he is close enough, David leans forwards and presses a kiss to Klaus’ cheek, right on the high curve of his cheekbone. Then he nudges his side gently. “Come on, let’s drop this in the room and get the food away.”

Klaus has the key for the house. He tugs it out of the pocket of his pants and hurries forwards; skipping up the dipping porch-steps and right up to the door. He peers through the decorative glass window on the door – it blurs the inside from view, looking a bit similar to frost coating the glass – as if he has not yet been inside the building, and then he slides the key into the lock, twists it, and pushes the door open. When it goes to swing closed, he sticks out his foot to catch it for David, pressing himself against the wall to let him shuffle past. He heads immediately for the kitchen, setting the bags down onto the round dining table, and Klaus joins him in searching through the bags of groceries.

He pulls things out, transferring them either to the cupboards and the humming refrigerator.

They have been moving into this place over the past couple of days; filling it with their few belongings, buying dishes and cutlery, dusting off the candles and lanterns around the place – making it liveable. There are still things they need to do, things they need to buy, but Klaus is looking forwards to his first night in his house with David.

“Daddy dearest used to tell me I’d never be able to live by myself,” he says with a giggle, sliding a bottle of milk into the fridge. “Look at me now!”

David snorts. His lips curl upwards as his eyes flick back to him. “Yeah, well, no offense, but your Dad isn’t the best person.”

“That’s an understatement, dear,” Klaus drawls, swinging back on his feet. His arm unfolds, hand swiping out to grab a couple of carrots, dropping them into the refrigerator. He tries not to think of his father, especially not now when he is finally free of him. His father, Sir Reginald, the CEO of multiple industrial sites that have been passed down the family since the industrial revolution and residing in the Hargreeves estate, also being passed down through generations. One might assume life living in the Hargreeves’ estate tended to by hired help, with nothing short of gourmet cooking, tutors for education and enough money to care for the following few generations without lifting a finger would be a perfect life. And it may have been, had his father not been who he was.

Life had been composed of rules and structure that, if not strictly followed, he was met with punishment. If he was disobedient, it was meant with punishment; if he slacked, it was met with punishment. Perfection was the only acceptable minimum for Reginald, and Klaus seemed to never be able to meet his standards no matter how hard he tried. And he _had_ tried; had tried so hard, until he realised it would never be good enough – _he_ would never be good enough, and eventually he gave up. Revelled in disobeying Reginald and enjoyed the lines of his face as he glared at him, cold and disgusted.

The last straw had been David. David, who worked in Reginald’s stables trying to earn a living for his family, all cooped up in a poorly built house, scraping by. Their relationship had been kept in the background, explored through moments in empty rooms, skipped classes, and Klaus slipping out at night to walk into town to see him, but they had gotten comfortable. Closer, blossoming into something more than curious and excited touches. They had felt invincible in their relationship, as if nothing could ever stop them or get in their way, and consequences had felt non-existent.

David had offered something Klaus had never experienced in life. The dizzying rush of freedom their relationship brought was addicting, as was the way David had looked at him; the way he held his face gently, and how he brushed his fingers through his hair, and how he smiled. The love David gave him was something he had never known to exist and Klaus would risk everything for it – for him.

Reginald had likely known about their relationship for a while, though it had never been mentioned until he had come upon them together in bed when he had missed his morning class. Klaus was to be punished; David would be fired, and likely so would all those working in his family. He would ruin David’s life, even if he didn’t say so.

Reginald didn’t care about David, though. David or his family; they were insignificant to him. Ruining them would be a way for him to punish Klaus, and it would work. He had screamed at him, yelled at him, until he had been locked into the claustrophobically small, windowless room that had nearly become more familiar than his bedroom. Two days later and Klaus had a bag of his belongings thrown over his shoulder, accompanied by multiple trinkets and trophies worth a pretty penny, and was climbing over the wall surrounding the estate to walk into town and find David.

Two weeks later, and they had skipped from city to city, town to town, far from Reginald and out of his reach completely, and instead finding themselves able to relax; to exhale and start afresh.

Klaus blinks out of his daze, watching David finish putting away the last of their groceries. “So,” he drawls, kicking out his leg to bring him closer to his side. “What plans await us today, then? Watching paint dry?”

David hums, leaning against the now-closed refrigerator and watching Klaus’ fingers dance up his side. He reaches a hand out to catch his, squeezing it gently. “Maybe. What plans were you thinking?”

“ _Well_ …” Sings Klaus, closing the small gap between them that feels too large, and he arches his back to press his chest to David’s. “I had an idea…” The hand not in his lover’s settles instead on his hip, fingers massaging the skin hidden beneath his pants, and he flutters his eyelashes at him with what he can only hope to be his best, innocent grin.

David, leaning in close with a grin, quirks an eyebrow. “What might that idea be?”

“I’ll have to show you it,” Klaus states. David’s other hand raises; it settles on his neck, fingers snaking around to the curls that have been growing out recently. Reginald would hate the untidy mess his natural hair had become at such an awkward length; Klaus loves it and so does David. Klaus tilts his head into the touch, struck silent by the way David’s head comes close to his; close enough that his breath ghosts his skin with each breath he takes. He is taunting him, he knows, being so close and simply hovering, but Klaus still finds himself frozen as he is each time, awaiting his next move with anticipation.

“I think I like the sound of your idea,” David utters, lips twitching upwards in a smug act, and before Klaus can huff at him, David finally presses their lips together. The touch brings Klaus back to life, like someone striking a match perfectly, unfreezing him from his spot, and he is eager to reciprocate it; throwing the game of ideas aside to scurry upstairs and into their bedroom.

Really, all of upstairs is their bedroom, aside from the closet also there. They don’t have to duck to avoid hitting their head off the roof due to the outwards curve of it, and it shapes the room and the walls oddly. The front wall has a circular window that overlooks the lead to the house and, further down the hill, the town just in sight, whilst the back wall has a large window growing from the floor and stretching upwards, offering the perfect view of the edge of the cliffs and the sea below them.

The bed is set by the window and although it allows a draft to sneak in through the night, it also offers them the perfect view of the way the sky explodes like a fire at night when the sun begins to sink down, and how it bleeds into ink as the moon rises. It shows the way the stars creep closer and shine brighter and how the waves reflect them like a second sky below, as if their house is suspended in space, and Klaus finds the sound of the waves crashing over a hundred feet beneath them to be relaxing and comforting, even. The draft creeping in doesn’t matter so much when the bed is warmed by both himself and David anyway, and with how he rests with one of David’s legs between his, an arm curling around his back, and his head tucked beneath his chin, accompanied by the two blankets they cover themselves in.

Klaus’ fingers stretch over David’s shoulder to reach the window, idly running over the glass as if he feels he might be able to reach out and dip his fingers in the sea just outside. The sun glistens over the surface as if molten gold is intermingled with each wave like ribbons.

“You like the sea?” David muses. Klaus allows his lips to twitch upwards; his head bobs slightly.

“I think it sounds nice. It’s pretty.”

“It’s relaxing,” he agrees. He turns his head to press a kiss to Klaus’ shoulder, and then he seems to hum in thought. “Have you ever been out on a boat?”

Klaus’ lips purse. He sinks down away from the window, returning to David, and drops his chin onto his chest. “No,” he admits. “I’ve swam a few times as a child, but that was about it. Just enough to learn how to. God forbid Sir Reginald lose his only heir to something as mundane as drowning in his pond, huh? Now he lost his only heir to _immature sexual urges_.”

David snorts. “My Pa used to be a fisher. He’d take me out sometimes, before he got a job in one of the factories. We have that shed; I could do it up and work on some cheap boat. It’d be nice to go out on the waves; you’d love it.”

“I think I would,” Klaus agrees, gaze slipping back to the water. He can only imagine what it is like to be out amongst them, rocking with each wave, with no land or rules or certainty to hold him down. Utter, uncontrolled freedom. He turns back to David, sitting up a little; he props himself up on his elbows either side of David’s chest. “Is that our project? Build a boat?”

David grins. “Could be fun. There’s still plenty of daylight; I’d have to start with that shed.”

Klaus hums, then he frowns. “I don’t like hammers.”

His lover snorts. “You don’t like work,” he corrects, and Klaus grins; landing a light slap on his shoulder.

“That’s a lie; do you know how much work it is to look this good every day? It’s a lot of work. And plus; flowers are pretty.”

David lifts a hand, tucking a curl behind his ear and then letting his hand linger on his cheek. “You could fix up some nice flowers, then. We could start a garden.”

“Oooh, I like that. Can we plant rhododendrons? Oh – wheat celosia? They’d be nice – well, anywhere, really – but maybe near the cliff? Marigolds?”

David snickers softly at him, running his thumb along his cheek. “You can plant whatever you’d like,” he states, and he sits upright, coaxing Klaus to do the same. “We could take a run into town, grab some stuff?”

Klaus groans at the idea of having to get up from this position; untangling himself from David and the blankets around them. Although reluctant, he forces himself to do so; sliding off the bed and onto his feet. He fumbles to find his clothes discarded around the room. David does the same, fumbling to pull his clothes back on, and then they hurry downstairs and back outside.

The town is about a twenty minute walk from their house, following a trail marked by tire-tracks until it grows into a cobbled road. It is small, one of those close-knit communities, and they had been so far welcoming to he and David moving nearby. Their house hadn’t been lived in for a while since the previous occupant, an older fisherman, and people seemed to like that house being used again rather than sitting and rotting up on the cliffs.

The gardening shop is owned by a tower of a man named Lloyd who inherited the shop and that welcome his enthusiasm. Their shop is bursting with life, vibrant with flowers spilling out of vases and bundles. He leaves with a bag full of seeds, fertiliser, spades, sheers and more. He has to swap the two bags from hand to hand as it weighs down on his fingers, and then he seeks David out in the DIY store further down the street. He finds him talking to an employee, gesturing in the vague direction of the cliffs. When he sees Klaus, his lips curl into a small smile, his head nods, and then he turns back to the employee for a last few words before they part.

“They’re going to deliver some wood up to the house,” he states. He takes one of the bags from Klaus, fitting his fingers around the handle and peering inside. “Just some light gardening, huh?”

“Just a few seeds,” Klaus grins, nudging him.

Trudging back up the cliff to their house while hauling a bag full of gardening supplies is more of a trek than he had expected. His feet dig into the ground and he lets out a loud groan, teetering dangerously on his feet and glaring against the sun to see the silhouette of their house.

“Why did we think a house on a cliff would be nice?”

“Think about how good it’ll be for your legs,” says David.

“It won’t be good if I need them amputated, David,” he drawls. He lets out another groan, fixes his grip on the bag, and pushes forwards with no more enthusiasm than he has had since they reached the bottom of the hill. By the time he reaches the porch, he drops the bag onto the floor and then follows it down onto the ground, sprawling his limbs out amongst the grass and revelling in the coolness coming from it.

David flops down next to him, kicking his legs out until his toe nudges Klaus’ thigh. “Think about the exercise,” he says breathlessly.

“Fuck exercise,” responds Klaus. He would shove him to emphasise his point, too, but he feels as if he might instead simply melt into the ground and become one with the earth. He can’t find it in himself to see anything wrong with that.

“Then think about how nice the garden’ll be.”

“Ugh. I better win a prize for it.”

“I’m sure you will.”

With great energy and strength, Klaus pushes himself into a sitting position. He slumps, huffs, then presses his hands to his thighs and shoves himself onto his feet. Snatching the bags of gardening supplies, he turns them upside down and lets the items fall carelessly out into a pile beside David.

With a groan similar to the one Klaus had emitted, David rises heavily to his feet and looks for his own bag, pulling out of it two large cans of paint and two brushes. He carries them towards the porch, setting them out, and then he begins to get to work sanding off the peeling paint and replacing it with the new coat.

Snapping a pair of gloves onto his hands, Klaus turns his attention to the nearest patch of weeds framing their house, and gets to work.

* * *

“Don’t get paint in the food, please.”

Klaus kicks his feet up onto one of the wooden chairs opposite him, stretching his legs out as far as they can go. David stands by the wood-burning stove opposite him, stirring what he has told Klaus is supposed to be a family-recipe stew, but there is paint splattered over his hands and up his arms, on the cuffs of his rolled up shirt that hugs his forearms just below his elbows.

“Could add some flavour,” David hums teasingly. Klaus makes an exaggerated noise of disgust, then David gestures a hand at him. “Better than the dirt all over you.”

Resting a hand loosely over his chest, Klaus makes a wounded noise. “Excuse me, I’ve been hard at work. Come next summer and the house is surrounded by a field of flowers, that’ll be because of me, David.”

“And it’ll be beautiful,” he says. He tastes the stew, looking thoughtful, then takes it off the hot stove and divides it into two portions. He hands one off to Klaus, who in turn takes it and inhales deeply. He moves his feet for David to sit down, only to replace them on his lap.

“I think we should get some decorations. Spruce the place up. Some paintings, or something. Even more plants, but this time inside the house.”

David hums around a mouthful of food. “We could go shopping. How much money have we got left?”

“Oh, dear David. I have enough shit from my Dad’s trophy cabinet to keep us going for a _while_ ,” Klaus tells him. “We’ll be fine. Go buck wild and get what you want. Worse comes to worst, I sneak back in and steal more stuff. It’ll be fine.”

David snorts. “Perhaps we can live with minimal theft, please?”

“Ugh, you’re so boring, fine. You’re lucky you’re handsome.”

David snorts. “Do you only care about my looks?”

“You also have a big-“

David coughs, cutting him off, and Klaus just smirks at him and nudges his thigh with his foot. “No, dear,” he drawls, “I also love you for you.”

“Finish your dinner,” David rasps, “please.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

* * *

The house has no electricity. David is used to this; Klaus, not so much. Some rooms in the estate didn’t have electricity, but the ones he used did, save for the gardening shed. Instead, this house has plenty of candle holders around the walls, which they had already filled with long candlesticks, and there are plenty of hooks to hang lanterns off of. There are a couple of candle-stick chandeliers too, hanging off of painted bronze chains, and Klaus had to hold the ladder for David to reach them and fill them, too.

Klaus huddles onto the grey couch in their living room, watching David crouch by the fireplace and pack it full of coal and wood and tinder, repeatedly striking matches and blowing into the smouldering embers until they seem to suddenly explode into life; flames curling up towards the chimney, devouring all the fuel they have put on it. It casts shadows dancing like figurines along the walls, growing tall along the floor, and the crackle they dance to almost overwhelms the distant sound of crashing waves.

Satisfied, David settles backwards on his feet, smiling into the flames, and then heaves himself upright and pads over to Klaus’ side. He falls back onto the couch, sitting hip to hip with him. “I was scared it wouldn’t catch.”

“We’ve got a little bonfire here,” Klaus muses, bringing his gaze back to David. Flames dance in the reflection of his eyes and warms his skin, making it glow slightly gold and ruby, and Klaus indulges the urge to lift his hand and close it over David’s cheek. His eyes sparkle as if there is a fire trapped inside of them, and Klaus sinks against his side. He radiates heat and envelops Klaus by wrapping his arm around his shoulders, tucking him further into his side as if he just slots right in, like two perfect pieces of a puzzle. His cheek beneath his hand feels comfortable, as if it is meant to be there, and when he tucks his head under his chin to let his curls tickle David’s skin, it feels comfortable, like coming home after a long day.

David presses a kiss to his head, lips brushing his mess of curls, and in front of him the fire roars; the flames dance.

* * *

Following a quick breakfast, both he and David find themselves outside early in the morning, picking up where they had left off with the garden and painting. The wind carries a chill towards them and Klaus tries to ward it off with the thick-furred dressing gown he wore, the collar brushing high up his neck, though once he gets stuck into his of tugging out weeds and discarding them in the growing pile beside him, he can ignore the cold for a while.

It comes sharply over the cliff edge, carrying with it the heavy sent of salt and spray from the sea, and Klaus frequently lets his eyes stray towards the cliff’s edge. They’ve yet to actually check out the beach and have only checked the cliff’s edge for security, and it holds up right up to the edge. The drop is steep and immediate, leading down immediately to a burst of stones. It’s dangerous, but neither he nor Dave are stupid enough to toe the edge enough to fall over.

He worries that the wind they get might interfere with the flowers he is planting. Ones closer to the cliff might not be able to properly thrive or grow, but he is determined to make the place look nicer. At the moment, he thinks it leans to having a haunted atmosphere; the lonely little house sat atop a cliff’s edge, with hungry waves crashing below, caught in a storm. He wants it to look more inviting, more like a home, and he thinks that having some colour in the form of living plants will be a step to doing that.

Maybe they could even plant a tree. An apple tree, maybe. Or just a tree in general. Or multiple. Ones that would grow tall and large, maybe the ones that are thin and their leaves make a shape a bit like a tear drop; or maybe one of the ones that have branches that grow out like outstretched spider legs, draped over air and letting curtains of leaves sway down low in the breeze. He isn’t quite sure they have the space for one of those large trees, but he is nothing if not determined to make things work where they shouldn’t.

When David has finished his coat of paint around the porch, he leaves it to dry and parts to the old shed erected behind their house. Klaus can hear him working; can hear the sound of wood groaning and being torn apart, hear a hammer bury a nail deep into wood with each resounding thud.

Setting aside a dirt-coated spade, Klaus shoves himself onto his feet and, expertly dancing around wet patches of paint, drifts inside. He hurries to fill a glass with water and all but downs it greedily. He checks the fire they had managed to keep in overnight, adding carefully a couple more logs, and from the living room window he can catch sight of David by the shed. Already it looks more stable, less like a sudden gust of wind might knock it over. Despite the chill in the air, David has shed his coat and left it hooked around a piece of wood so that it won’t blow away, and his shirt instead clings to his body; hugging his arms, sticking to his back and blowing out at the bottom when the wind catches it. He pauses occasionally to simply stare at his work and catch his breath, hammer hanging from his fingertips.

Klaus returns to the kitchen. He fixes up a glass of the sparkling lemonade bottled in the refrigerator, and then fixes up a quick snack of a sandwich and apple slices. Feeling proud of his culinary skills, he allows himself to take it out wearing a grin.

“Hello, handy-man,” he calls. “I come bearing gifts.”

David turns, poking his head out of the doorway to stare at him and then down at his hands. His eyes light up and he eagerly reaches out for them.

“Thank you, dear,” he says, voice all chipper and cheerful, and he settles down onto the ground to eat and drink. Klaus takes the chance to look around the little shed.

“Is this your man cave, then?” He asks, and he reaches out to nudge the wall with his knuckles, somewhat impress when it doesn’t topple over and collapse on them. David snorts, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I like hands-on projects.”

With a grin, Klaus lowers himself onto the floor opposite him and states, “you have one right here.”

David snickers, rolling his eyes and nudging him with his foot. “How’s the garden?”

“Give the plants time,” Klaus tuts. “I was thinking we could get some trees.”

David hums. “They’d grow out here?” He asks, and Klaus shrugs.

“Don’t know. Could try, though.”

“Why not?”

Klaus grins. He leans forwards, pecks David’s cheek, and then takes the now-empty plate and glass from him. “Don’t stay out too long,” he requests, and then he returns back inside.

Without the strict schedule of life under Reginald’s authority, Klaus isn’t entirely sure what to do with himself most of the time. He has no real hobbies and doesn’t really know how to go about doing such a thing. He had liked art, though those lessons were lost quickly when he was young and showed too much interest in such a ‘useless’ thing, and he had hardly picked up a pencil since. Perhaps he ought to start again.

He digs through the kitchen and the study until he can find a sharpened pencil and their notebook, and he goes to the back page and freezes, stuck for inspiration. His eyes bounce to the window just by the fireplace ahead of him, and he catches David, and beyond him, the cliffs.

Klaus looks down and starts drawing.

* * *

“Drawing?”

Klaus hums, not lifting his gaze from the paper in his hands. David’s footsteps go to and fro; he kicks off his shoes near the front door down the corridor; he hangs his coat up in the closet just behind Klaus; he sets water to boil in the kitchen; he comes, finally, towards Klaus, hovering behind him in the chair and peering over his shoulder to look at his drawing.

“You’re talented,” he comments, and his hand is warm when it settles on his shoulder; his thumb grounding as it runs back and forth idly over his skin. Klaus’ lips twitch; his head leans back finally to look at him, and he smiles.

“Thanks.”

David smiles at Klaus’ expression and he kisses the corner of his mouth, a fleeting peck, and asks, “tea?”

“That’d be heavenly right now.”

* * *

“Okay, take a moment and pray for me.”

Klaus inhales deeply, staring at the tap his hand rests on. He cranes his head over his shoulder to peer at David and quirk an eyebrow. “Are you praying?”

David grins. “Of course. Try it.”

Klaus twists the tap. Both he and David watch it carefully, listens as the pipes around them begin to groan as if only just waking from a century’s sleep. Then it begins to hiss, and the whole house seems to rattle as if they have disturbed it; and, finally, water begins to spew out of the tap, crashing unceremoniously into the tub.

Klaus claps his hands together. “We have water!” He exclaims, spinning around to grin triumphantly at David, grinning right back at him.

“Is it warm though?” He asks. Klaus pauses; purses his lips; turns around and, hesitantly, reaches his hand out to test the water. Then he grins wider.

“We have hot water,” he rephrases. He turns, letting David supervise it as it fills, and he busies himself with swiping up a box of matches and lighting the lanterns and candles set about the room. The sun has begun to set already, blanketing them in a cover of darkness and shadows, and he longs to chase the darkness away with the candles before he can get comfortable in the bath. When he is done lighting them, finishing with shaking out his match before it has the chance to kiss his fingertips. Then he turns to David, already taking his shirt off and setting it aside, and so Klaus follows his lead.

David settles into the tub, resting his back against the end opposite the tap, and Klaus steps in between his legs and settles with his back to David’s chest. The water makes his skin tingle and his head dips backwards, throat stretching, head resting over David’s shoulder. His eyes flutter closed and he listens only to the crackle of the candles around him and the distant, ever-present crashing waves.

At some point, David begins to work water through his hair, and then massages shampoo into it. His fingers tickle his scalp, curl the strands around his fingers. Klaus’ head pushes into his touch and tension melts out of his body. David’s lips decorate the backs of his shoulders with feather-light kisses, and then ghost over his ear to hum, “my little artist.”

Klaus smiles at him, and he melts when David’s lips trace the trails of water running down his neck.

* * *

The flowers begin to bloom.

Klaus watches them every day; checks on them every day. He caresses his fingers over their stems and their leaves and their forming petals. Some fared better than others and he had to give up on a few, the ones too exposed to wind to grow properly, but the ones that did blossom he was incredible proud of.

The shed continued to grow in size as David fixed it, occasionally having to get help from some people from town to add final touches to it and reinforce it. The fresh paint on the house brought it to life, and the hanging flower baskets accompanied the porch, as well as outdoor lanterns. The drive up the cliff became more prominent as it was used more, grass being beaten flat under tires.

When summer came around, David bought a boat. It was small, a little row boat and, despite Klaus’ insistence to just buy a new one, he preferred to take an older one that he could work on and fix. He had a knack for things like that; would lose himself for hours in little crafts broken only by Klaus coming by to make sure he ate and drank and came in for dinner. It was worth it, though.

The beach nearest their house wasn’t overly popular; too close to rocks to be safe, and so they had to wander further down where the rest of the townsfolk came down. On a sunny day, he and David took their boat down to the beach and pushed it out onto the water.

David, with the water lapping close to his hips, grins at Klaus. “Just jump up onto it,” he says, tone bouncing with a laugh.

“It’s hard!” Klaus exclaims. He places his hands onto the boat and tries to haul himself onto it, but the weight of the water drags him back down and the boat rocks to the point Klaus is scared it will tip on him as he gets in. “Just hold it for me, you louse.”

“Woah, that’s mean, Hargreeves,” chuckles David with a sly grin. Klaus resists the urge to flip him off only because he finally does come close and hold the boat still enough for Klaus to get into it. Then, showing off, he gets into it with smooth ease, settles onto one of the benches and picks up the oars to propel them away from the beach.

Klaus turns to face the waves. The boat rides smoothly over them, picking up surprising speed that makes his hair push back away from his face. Water sprays up over the edge of the boat at them and they go over another wave; Klaus can’t help but grin. David was right, of course.

Being out on the waves bring a sense of freedom. He feels unstoppable on the water; he feels as if nothing but he, David and the waves exist. The sea around him is unpredictable and pure and he reaches his arm over the edge of the boat to dip his fingers into it.

David sails them far out from the land, though still just in sight of it. Here, Klaus can turn and he can see the cliffs and the faint silhouette of their house atop it, surrounded by a blurred field of vibrant colours from his flowers. He can see the waves crashing into the base of the cliffs, the waves he falls asleep to every night.

He turns back to David, wearing the same exhilarating grin as he is, and they both laugh out of nothing short of joy.

* * *

They go out with a picnic. David sets aside the oars and they unpack the basket with them, with sandwiches and lemonade and strawberries. Klaus takes out the notepad that has been rapidly filling with sketches with his newfound love for his hobby, and he draws David sitting opposite him in the boat, the waves around him, and nothing else. As if this is a little pocket in the universe, one that is simply their own universe solely for themselves, hidden away from the rest of the world.

The sun begins to set. They stay out on the waves to watch the sky explode into flames that lick along the horizon and, on this cloudless evening, the fire is reflected in the sea around them, and it feels like they are sailing along the sky. The sea and sky meet like a kiss along the horizon, a never-ending expanse of pinks and reds and oranges that melt slowly into a deeper, darker blue.

As the boat rocks on the waves beneath them and the world seems to explode around them, Klaus takes David’s hands and leans into his touch; giddy with love and joy, he kisses him.

* * *

David goes into town one day. Klaus, lounging in bed, clad in a loose night gown that dances around his ankles and slips down his shoulders, decides to stay at home as he goes. Listening to the radio and humming to it, then singing with it when it is a song he knows, he hardly hears David approaching until he is creeping up the stairs and singing with him.

He grins, sitting up in the bed, watching David prowl closer with a spring in his steps and a wide grin on his lips, singing only slightly of tune with the song. He creeps closer to the bed and Klaus thrusts his legs out, rising to his feet, and David grasps his wrist and tugs him into a dance. Whirling gracelessly around their bedroom, feet falling clumsily onto the wooden floorboards beneath them. Klaus laughs as he tumbles around David with dizzying speed, holding tightly onto his hand until his foot catches on the rug thrown out over the floor and they both go crashing onto the ground together in a mess of flailing limbs.

Klaus laughs until he is breathless, and so does David; his chest bouncing, breaths wheezing. Klaus nudges him with his knee. “You’re – you’re a goof,” he says, and David burst into laughter again. His head rests against the floor with a faint thump and his shoulders tremble. His eyes crinkle and Klaus lets his eyes trace his face; following the slope of his forehead and the uneven ridge of his nose, the high jut of his cheekbone and sharp curve of his jaw. The light filtering in through the open window kisses his skin with a pale golden glow and Klaus eyes the star field of freckles dotted over his cheeks.

David’s beauty is always breath-taking no matter how many times he looks at him. It strikes him to the core, the utter perfection of the way David’s hair curls slightly and strays out of place to frame his forehead, and how there are endless freckles to find around his body; the way his eyes hold a sea of ice in them, pale and lighter than the sea they live above; the wide expanse of his shoulders and the way his muscles move when he works; the heaviness of his work-calloused hands resting with care and gentleness when he touches Klaus. And now, the way his face pinched in happiness and laughter, and his shoulders bounced, his deep, silky laugh.

Propping himself upright, Klaus outstretches a hand to ghost over his cheek, fingertips gentle and hovering over his skin, and then David turns his head to look at him and pushes his cheek into his touch. His laughter softens as he meets Klaus’ steady gaze and he lifts a hand to cover the one on his cheek.

Inching closer and sitting on his knees, Klaus ducks down to kiss him; softly, like the first kiss they shared around the back of Reginald’s stables, when the sun was beginning to dip low on the horizon and the shadows hid them from prying eyes; when their close proximity was more pronounced and Klaus realised David had the ability to make his heart skip a beat. The kiss had been soft, hesitant, uncertain in its execution; both men shocked when confronted with the weight of their emotions for the other and the thought that none of them wanted that kiss to be their last.

David sits up off the floor, holding Klaus in place with his hand on his cheek, refusing to let him part the kiss. Klaus’ fingers have memorised the path from David’s check down to curl gently around his neck, then they slip down to rest on his chest, feeling the way his heart rises to meet his touch beneath his ribs.

When David finally parts them, he inhales softly and then tucks his head to the side of Klaus’, bringing his mouth close to his ear. “I got you something,” he says, hand falling from Klaus’ cheek to duck into his pocket. He pulls out a small jewellery box, decorated grey with gold swirls on each corner, and then he opens it up and pulls out the necklace inside.

It is a simple delicate silver chain with a pale, frosty blue crystal trapped within a twisted wire cage. David holds it up to let Klaus eye the crystal dangling from it. It looks as if it has capture waves inside of its delicate walls, and it settles lightly on his chest when David shuffles behind him, gently sweeping aside his growing hair, and clips it into place around his neck.

“Celestite,” he says.

“It looks like your eyes,” murmurs Klaus, curling his fingers around it to close it in his palm. He turns around to look at David. He holds the crystal up, placing it in line with his eyes, and sure enough they look the same pale blue. “It’s beautiful.”

David smiles, pleased with himself, and Klaus les the necklace go to thud against his chest and wraps his arms around Dave’s torso. “Why?” He asks, and he hums.

“I wanted to get you something,” he simply says.

“Thank you,” Klaus utters, turning his head to dot his neck in kisses. David squeezes him gently, then pulls back, nudging his shoulder.

“Come on,” he says, rising to his feet and tugging Klaus up with him. “Let’s not spend the day entirely on the floor.”

“Maybe that’s what I want to do,” Klaus whines, trudging behind David and downstairs. As he walks, the crystal sways on his neck before coming to rest home over his heart every time.

* * *

David knows when it begins to get dark to light the candles and lanterns no matter what. Klaus stands, watching the ones either side of their bed catch, chasing away the darkness that makes Klaus’ heart twist with irrational fear. Louder now than the crashing waves is the thunder that booms around them. Over the water, lightning flashes, briefly illuminating the dark horizon. He feels as if the house might begin to shake on its foundations.

David comes close once the candles and lanterns have taken. He pulls Klaus out his anxiety-fuelled daze, unfreezing him from the spot and guiding him to the bed. They settle down together and he envelops Klaus in a tight embrace, resting his chin atop Klaus’ head.

Klaus’ ear rests over his heart, focusing on the steady beating echoing from his ribs.

The storms here can come on terrifyingly swiftly; with little to no warning, sending rain thundering down on them and making him fear a flood. The thunder sounds as if there is a war echoing above the clouds and he fears it might fall upon them and tear apart what he and David have built up here.

But David holds him strong, and keeps him safe when the thunder seems to surround their house, as if his arms might be enough to protect him from any harm or any threat; and Klaus believes it. He is free of Reginald’s control and nothing can reach him here, on this cliff, with David’s arms wound around him.

Lightning flashes behind him and David grips him tighter. Then Klaus realises he is humming something soft by his ear. He recognises it to be a familiar song. Lips twitching upwards, Klaus joins in with humming it as if he cannot hear thunder nor lightning nor the rain storming down around them.

* * *

Life continues on. The house has been transformed from the dreary little thing they first bought, brought to life with blooming flowers and soon slowly sprouting apple trees, hidden nearby David’s shed to give them some reprieve from the gusts of wind that blow over the cliffs’ edge.

Klaus enjoys exploring the waves on the boat with David; letting the world crumble away from them until it is only them and the waves rocking them, stretching out for eternity. Klaus sprawls out as much as he can on the floor of the boat, staring up at the cloudless sky overhead, listening to David dip the oars into the water and propel them further; the sound of waves rolling underneath the boat. 

He raises his hand up into the air, letting the wind dance through his fingers like ribbons, as if he might be able to reach the sky and dip his hand into space.

“Do you think we could find the end of the world if we keep sailing?” He asks, lifting his head to look at David. “Or that, maybe, there is somewhere out there that no one else has seen? Where the world comes to a standstill and just freezes?”

David hums, dropping his gaze from the waves. “What do you think?” He asks. Klaus snorts a little.

“I don’t think so, but it would be cool, right?”

David chuckles softly. “Yeah, yeah, it would be.”

“Plus,” Klaus muses, propping himself up on his elbows carefully as to not shake the boat. “If the world was going to end, it would have done so two years ago. Or,” he pauses, turning thoughtful, “maybe in the year two-thousand. Can you image that? Living in the two-thousands?”

David sets aside the oars, allowing the boat to drift idly over the gentle waves. “We’ll be living in floating houses, huh? Or underwater, maybe.”

“Imagine that,” Klaus sighs, flopping back down and turning his gaze heavenward. “I don’t know if I believe in all that stuff, though. Like, what did people expect to happen? That the universe would sense the man-made concept of time changing from eighteen to nineteen hundred? It’s happened, like, nineteen times now.”

David snorts. “Do you not believe in anything?” He asks. Klaus purses his lips, thoughtful for a brief moment, and then he shakes his head. Even if he were to believe in such things, he is only one person and powerless to change the ways of the world and the universe. David continues his questioning. “What about Heaven? Fate?”

“Do you believe in all that?” Klaus returns, sitting upright with an eyebrow quirked questioningly at him. David’s eyes bounce away, searching the depths of the sea for his answer.

“Well, I like to imagine _something_ happens once you die. My own little corner in Heaven with you would be nice. Maybe we would just wake up in bed and live for eternity on our cliff as a little personal Heaven. And,” David continues, leaning close to Klaus. “How could you think us meeting was a coincidence?”

Klaus hums, lips slowly spreading in a small grin. “You’re cheesy,” he accuses. David grins back at him, waving a hand.

“No, no – come on, are you telling me you don’t think we were meant to be? It isn’t written in the stars?”

Klaus giggles, shoulders slumping and head tilting back, baring his face to the sky. The boat rocks beneath him as David comes even closer, close enough to take his face in his hands and force him to look at him. “Come on then, I _dare_ you to tell me you don’t love me.”

Klaus places his hands over David’s. “Don’t be like that,” he whines.

“Say it, if that’s what you think,” he teases. Klaus whines, gripping David’s wrists tightly, shaking his head as much as he can while it is held in David’s hands.

“No, no,” he says. “I love you, you goof. Of course I do.”

“Do you love my soul?”

Klaus laughs. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Do you love my soul? It’s a very serious question, Klaus,” David says, tone faux serious as he pouts. “Would you love me in a hundred years? In another life? Would you love my soul forever?”

Klaus offers a fond smile, snorting softly. “Dear David,” he says. “I’ll love you forever. Is that what you want to hear?”

David grins, wide and as bright as the sun. “Exactly what I wanted,” he says, smug, and then he leans in to steal a kiss from his lips. Klaus grins into his mouth, hands hugging the back of David’s neck, fingers curling in his hair.

David pushes forwards, body leaning over Klaus, and he welcomes him eagerly until the boat rocks dangerously on a wave and they both yelp in shock, limbs flailing to straighten to the boat before they can capsize.

Klaus stares at David, and he stares back. Then Klaus laughs, and David joins in.

* * *

The crystal hangs low off his neck, resting on David’s bare chest, rising and falling with sharp, heavy breaths. His hands feel like fire on his hips, hot and everywhere; able to glide down his waist and down his spine; able to entangle in his hair and caress softly every inch of his body. His eyes are dark in the flickering candlelight and his heart roars when Klaus presses kiss after kiss down his chest.

He works his way back up his chest and to his neck, forcing David to tilt his head slightly, baring his throat for him, and Klaus rewards him with another kiss with grazing teeth. He noses the crook of his neck, breath shaky as a shiver runs down his spine like a drop of cold water. He kisses the skin below David’s ear and then, in a breathy voice, utters, “I meant it.”

David’s hand cups the back of Klaus’ neck; his thumb runs along his jaw. “Meant what?” He breathes.

“I love you, and I love you down to your soul,” says Klaus. “I’d love you anywhere, any life.”

He hears the hitch in David’s breath as it catches in the back of his throat. He turns his head, forcing Klaus to lift his, and then clashes their lips together in a hungry, fiery kiss, as if he has never kissed Klaus before; and Klaus reciprocates it just the same.

* * *

_April, 1903._

Klaus feels sick to his stomach when he wakes up that morning. Something he can’t truly describe; a heaviness in his guts, a shake to his limbs; fists gripping his lungs tightly and not allowing him to breathe properly.

He picks at the breakfast David makes him; unenthused at the nice weather; the sun that bears down on them and the perfectly blue sky.

In the bathtub, David runs his hands through Klaus’ hair and wraps an arm around his stomach, keeping him flush to his chest, and watches Klaus’ distracted gaze. “What’s wrong?” He asks, voice thick with concern. “You don’t look well.”

Despite the heat of the water around him, Klaus shudders. “I don’t feel too well,” he admits. His heart is beating irrationally quickly; he feels on edge, as if he expects to step through a door and something bad to happen; that around every corner danger lays ahead of him. His sense of trepidation does not fade throughout the day, no matter whether Klaus is held by David and having his fingers card soothingly through his hair, or if they are cuddled in front of the fireplace on their couch, or if they remain in bed.

“Ill?” David asks, pressing a kiss to where his neck meets his shoulder. Klaus shakes his head.

“Not exactly.”

David hums. “Just take it easy,” he offers. “We don’t need to do anything today.”

He forces himself to exhale steadily, closing his eyes and leaning back into David. “I know,” he uttrs, sighing. “Bad dream, I guess.”

“Maybe.” David squeezes him gently. “We could go out on the boat, if you’d like? Real nice day, it might take your mind off things,” he suggests. Klaus ponders the idea and knows that it could work; nothing but him, David, and the waves. He could just relax and let the waves carry his worries and anxiety off elsewhere. But something stops him. He sighs, slumping with a heavy fatigue.

“I might just try to take a nap,” he murmurs truthfully, pulling a hand out of the water to rub one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. His very being feels heavy, as if weights have been stuffed into the marrow of his bones, dragging him down.

“We can do that,” David agrees, voice soft and encouraging. He follows Klaus back towards their bed once he finds the motivation to drag himself out of the bathtub and to dry himself off. He curls around Klaus, holding him flush to his chest, and his fingers trace shapes onto his skin; his lips ghost over his neck and his shoulders, and he is simply content to lay there as Klaus stares at the wall opposite him, unable to shake the feeling that something is horrifically wrong.

With a sigh, Klaus closes his eyes.

The next day is the same. He wakes up in David’s arms to a sunny morning and the sense of encroaching, instinctual horror. David makes them breakfast and he picks at it, forcing himself to swallow around his anxiety. They light the fire; David reads a book while Klaus bounces a pencil idly between his fingers, staring at the flames in the fireplace.

“Maybe it’d be good to get outside,” David offers him, running a hand through his hair. Klaus knows he is likely right; maybe a trip into town would help him; maybe he is just stuck in a rut, and cooping himself up indoors is doing him no good either. As if he can read his mind, David continues to speak. “We could go into tow, have a walk around, maybe. Or just go down to the beach, or go out in the boat, or, if you’d like, we could probably even catch a bus into a city for a change.”

With a sigh, Klaus forces himself to sit upright a little. “No, it’s fine,” he dismisses. “You shouldn’t coop yourself up here just because of me, though. You can go out if you want.”

“I’m more than happy to stay with you, Klaus,” David insists, but Klaus is tired and it feels as if everything is simply too much; everything digs underneath his skin and he has to stop himself from lashing out.

“Go out, David,” he says, a little more sharply than he intended, and so he sighs. “It’s a nice day. Take advantage of it. I’ll probably just go take a bath or something.”

Frowning, David eyes Klaus. He caressing his cheek softly and Klaus lets his eyes slip closed, leaning into his hand. He takes it in his, turning it to kiss David’s knuckles. “Seriously, go do something with your life. I’m fine.” He forces a smile, and David doesn’t look convinced at all. He must assume that Klaus is wanting the time alone, and maybe he does just want some time to be utterly alone, and so he nods.

“Alright,” he murmurs, rising from the couch. “I won’t be long. I love you,” he says, and presses a soft kiss to his forehead.

“I know,” Klaus murmurs with a small smile, eyes closing at his touch. David grins at him, eyebrows raised.

“Do you really though?”

Klaus snorts and allows himself to smile. “Of course, goof. I love you too.” He lets David press a last kiss to his lips, gentle and caring, and then David ruffles his hair with a teasing grin.

“Go and relax, dear. I’ll be back soon.”

And Klaus watches him go. Hears the front door open and close gently. He hears the distant sounds of him fetching the boat, going to take it down to the beach. Klaus curls his fingers around the crystal dangling from his neck, the one David got him all that time ago, and he feels horrifically _wrong_.

He lays back down onto the couch, staring into the fire until his eyes slip closed.

When he opens them again, it is to the fire smouldering and rain pattering against the windows. He blinks sleep groggily from his eyes, rubs it away, and shoves himself upright. His shoulders and neck ache from the position he had fallen asleep in and he has to take a moment to slowly roll his shoulders back. He stifles a yawn, looking around until he can find a clock.

Hours have passed.

Outside, the sky has turned into ash with heavy, grey clouds. Rain floods down from them and he can hear the distant sound of thunder getting closer and closer, and he curses the abruptness of the storms out here.

Not a single candle or lantern has been lit. He hurries to throw more wood onto the fire and blows the embers back to life, and then he hurries to light a few candles and realises why it is odd.

Hours have passed, and David ought to be back by now. David always lights the candles when it begins to get dark; he knows how Klaus hates it.

“David?” Klaus calls, looking around. “Are you here?”

He is not in the kitchen, nor is he in the bathroom downstairs. The study is empty and so he creeps upstairs, but the bed is empty. The bathroom door is ajar like he left it earlier that morning, and also devoid of anyone. Eyebrows furrowing, he crosses the room with hurried steps to stand by his bed side and peer out of the large window there, out over the cliffs and to the sea.

The waves crash much more violently now; tumbling over one another in a haste to devour anything they can, hungry and merciless and brutal. No one in their right minds would be out on the waves now; and the beach is, rightfully so, empty as far as Klaus can see.

Perhaps David had gone into town, Klaus thinks. It is the likely option. Klaus had wanted some time to be alone, and so David had given him time, and the storm had come. Walking up the cliff to their house in a storm was not fun, and so he was likely still in town, waiting it out.

Nonetheless, Klaus finds himself able to sit down for only all of five minutes before he is pulling on a jacket, shoving on some shoes, and running outside. Wind buffets against him and he shields his head from the rain uselessly as he struggles to reach David’s shed, throwing open the door and stepping into the darkness inside.

The boat isn’t there.

David probably left it down by the beach, though. No point bringing it back up here only to walk back to town; he probably left it and would come back for it on his way back home. Which is why David isn’t home; trekking up the cliff in a storm is horrific on its own, but hauling the boat with him, by himself, is unthinkable. So David is waiting; probably in Alli’s café, nursing a strong coffee to energise him to walk back.

Chastising himself for his own frayed nerves, Klaus hurries inside. He kicks his shoes off, hangs the wet jacket up, and returns to the fire to heat his shaking hands up. Water runs in rivulets down his neck and he hurries to swipe it away with his hand, for it feels suffocating.

Lightning flashes outside and he jumps, cringes, and sits alone on the couch opposite his fireplace, hugging his knees to his chest and waiting for David’s return.

He waits.

And he waits.

And he waits.

The storm turns to a shower, and then even the rain begins to fade away. The grey clouds move on, fade off into the distance, and Klaus expects the door to open any time soon. He expects to hear the familiar sound of the boat being dragged towards the shed, and hear David cursing as he stumbles over his own feet and nearly drops it on himself. But no sound comes.

The clouds part just in time for Klaus to watch the sun set. The sky explodes into colour before fading slowly into a deep, void-black, and space and darkness envelops the world like an isolating, cold embrace.

Klaus stays on the couch, unable to make himself move for a long time. The house that has become his home feels unwelcoming now; the shadows threatening to jump out and grab him at any moment, and the wind that whistles around the windows, the creaking of the staircases; it feels as if the house doesn’t like him being here and is trying to scare him out of it.

He creeps up the stairs eventually, past midnight, with a lantern clasped in his trembling hands. He feels as if he is trespassing into his bedroom; he moves with light, silent steps.

The sight of his empty, dark bedroom makes his heart beat irrationally, and he hurries to cross the room and sit down on his side of the bed. He pulls his knees to his chest, and keeps the gas lantern in his grasp. He can’t bring himself to light the other ones around the room and the darkness seems to creep in on him; dancing around the edge of the lantern’s light, taunting him, furious that the little lantern prevents it from getting close and sinking its claws into him.

He has not slept a single night in this bed alone. He feels as if he has broken into some lonely, abandoned house, forced his way in and sat upon the bed inside, rather than going to his own bed in his own bedroom.

Perhaps David is staying the night in town. Maybe the storm hit it worse there and the way up became flooded and he thought it best to wait out until tomorrow.

But a part of Klaus feels empty without him there. As if someone has scooped parts of him out, left him hollow and cold inside, and he can’t shake the feeling no matter how much he reassures himself.

He ends up falling asleep alone, clutching the lantern until it burns out, slumped against the chilled window behind him. And when he wakes, he is still alone.

He spends the day alone until, finally, he throws on clothes, double-checks the shed despite knowing no one has been near the house, and then he goes down to the beach. He searches the pier for the boat, perhaps left tied up with the other boats, but it is not there and he would recognise it in a heartbeat. The hand-crafted, dark wood forming the boat that was made by David’s own hands; of course he would recognise it. It has his unique scrawl of it, the painted name of _The Soul_ on it.

With a hand curled around the crystal of David’s necklace, he goes into town. There are two motels there and neither have had a David Kayson stay that night.

They are not strangers to the town, but Klaus cannot imagine David staying with someone else rather than going to one of the motels. Even if he hadn’t any money on him; the motel owners are understanding, especially for locals and with the weather conditions; they would have allowed David to spend a night there if needed and to pay them back the next day. If he hadn’t, they simply live twenty minutes away; they could come and rattle their door on its hinges until they did pay.

“Oh, lovely to see you down here, Klaus!” Calls a voice, and he spins around to see Veronica; the small, young woman who works in the town’s library. Klaus stares at her, wide-eyed, suddenly struck-dumb and unsure of how to communicate as she comes closer. “It’s been a while – thought you’d forgotten the rest of the world, up on that cliff. Lloyd had mentioned he got a new batch of seeds in; thought you would like them to join that field you’ve got growing up there-“

“Have you seen David?” Klaus blurts at her, interrupting her. She freezes, head tilting to the side slightly, eyebrows lifting.

“Oh, uh – well, no. But you’ve said he’s often doing projects, right? Maybe he’s at Dario’s workshop-“

“No, no,” says Klaus, shaking his head frantically. “He, uh, last night – he went out, last night. He hasn’t come back. I thought he might have stayed here overnight due to the storm, but the road wasn’t flooded and-“ Klaus trails off, uncertain, and shrugs helplessly.

Veronica’s face softens. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she offers. “I didn’t see him here at all yesterday.”

“I think he went to the beach first,” says Klaus, as if telling her this might jog her memory, that the introverted librarian might somehow be the one to know where David is. “He took the boat down. It wasn’t – it wasn’t at the pier.”

Veronica’s face softens, something hesitant in her eyes. “I’ll keep an eye out for anything,” she offers. She says nothing negative nor anything positive, nothing promising, and Klaus _knows_. He knows, just like she does, and still he nods and offers his grateful thanks, and he returns to his house alone.

And he waits.

He lights his lantern and he tucks his limbs into his side of the bed as if not daring to taint the remainder of David’s presence with his own, as if it might wash away his scent still clinging to the bedsheets. With a trembling hand, he reaches out and fists David’s side of the bedsheets; he pulls it to his face hesitantly, almost afraid of what might happen when it gets close to him. Then he presses his cheek to it, and then presses his nose to it and inhales.

It smells like David’s aftershave. His breath hitches and he curls his fingers tighter into the blanket. He sets aside his lantern and slides down the mattress until he can rest his head on David’s pillow, and it almost feels like laying his head on his chest again, except it is cold and wrong and it isn’t David and it tears the first cry from his lips.

David is gone, and a part of him knows that if he hasn’t come back now, then he never will.

And why? Why did David just disappear? Why did he leave and never come back? He had left Klaus with a kiss and a hug and just decided that he was done. He had told Klaus that he loved him and he had disappeared without a trace, and he would never come back, not now.

It feels as if a part of him, as if all of him shatters at the realisation. His being twists with a sudden loneliness so strong it is like agony, and he wails into David’s cold pillow, tears streaming down his face, flowing over his cheeks and dripping off his jaw, melting into his pillow. He sobs; loud, ugly things that echo in the darkness of his cold bedroom, that turn into raw hiccups that hurt his throat.

David is gone, and with him has left a part of himself; torn ragged, claws thrust through his flesh to tear him apart. Suddenly the flowers around his house seem to be dead and insignificant, hardly better than black and white shrivelled shreds, and the house is dark and cold and empty.

Klaus aches, something deep and irreparably broken, and he can’t stop himself from sobbing brokenly into David’s pillow; their blanket tangled around his legs, twisted and caught, and David is gone.

David is gone.

There is not a trace of him.

No one sees him in town. No one sees him out of town. Klaus huddles on his bed alone at nights, listening to the distant sound of the waves David disappear on, and in the mornings he walks past the kitchen David would stand by the stove and hum in. He lights the fire, sometimes, if it’s cold enough, and he hides indoors rather than facing the world without David by his side. He stares out amongst the waves, as if awaiting to see the boat coming back to him in the distance. David will come back, and Klaus must wait for him.

He takes a glass of water to bed with him, and he remains in bed for as long as he can. He stares emptily ahead of himself, drinking when his throat is dry, sleeping when everything begins to melt away from his grasp. He uses the bathroom when he has to, and he hardly ever goes back downstairs, because it is not his house now but simply rooms in which David is not there. Rooms where David had been, rooms where David had sang, and David had laughed, and David had held him, and David had been, and how he is not any longer.

It feels as if he has lost a limb, or multiple. As if he is nothing but a hollow shell, with weak skin and fragile bones only just held together, a moment away from crumbling apart like broken porcelain. He would let it happen, he thinks, if only it would happen quicker.

In what world could there be Klaus without David? What was the reason for his being without him there? He had made fun of David for his silly idea of soulmates, and now he is here, torn apart and lifeless without him.

But for a while he can almost lie. David has left Klaus, and Klaus would never hold that against him. If David is alive, has made a new life for himself, Klaus will let him do whatever makes him happy. He will be okay if he is happy, even if to be happy he has to cut Klaus out of his life entirely. Klaus will never be mad at him. He can almost be content with the knowledge that David is elsewhere, content himself with his new life, one without Klaus in it.

Until he receives a knock at his door.

Dragging himself out of bed, he goes to the door. The town knows of David’s disappearance by now. Has been keeping an eye out; put rewards for finding him.

They have not found him.

They did find torn planks of wood drifting in on the beach. Dark wood, hand-crafted, chipped paint declaring it _The Soul._ David’s boat, torn apart by rocks and waves on a stormy night.

He closes his eyes and he sees David, struggling against a merciless storm that throws him back and forth in his boat. He struggles to sail back to land, but the waves carry him further and further out, and waves crash into him, drowning him, and he cannot see the land; cannot remember which way he came, and he might only be sailing further out.

He struggles to use the bucket inside the boat to throw water over its side, but it is useless. Another wave crashes against him and floods the boat again. One of the oars is lost and devoured by the waves; he only has one now, and he is stuck clinging to the boat as it is thrown about. He is frozen to the bone, drenched, spluttering through the water that almost threatens to drown him through the rain and the constant barrage of waves attacking him.

And he is scared. He is alone, and lost, and terribly afraid; fighting to get back to land, to get back to Klaus, alone in the house on the cliffs.

Another wave crashes into him and maybe this is the one that flips the boat. He is thrown into the water carelessly, tossed around in its depths like a ragdoll, and he resurfaces long enough to grab one breath before being dragged under. Despite knowing it is useless, he still tries to swim, tries to find his boat and get back in, if only to stay afloat long enough for the storm to subdue slightly, but he cannot see and he keeps going under.

His lungs burn, and he thrashes violently, but the world is nothing but space and darkness and the fire in his lungs and the ice in his bones.

Perhaps, as he sinks, his thoughts will turn to Klaus. He will ache fiercely when he realises he will never return to him, and that he is leaving him all alone in this storm he knows Klaus hates, and he will relive the kiss he departed him with in his last few moments as everything begins to fade.

Klaus breaks down with the boat’s ruin right there.

His knees give out and he collapses on his porch, feeling more emotion than he has in the past few days, and it is all expelled from him with a torn scream.

David is gone, and dead. He truly never will come back to Klaus’ side, and he will be lost to cold depths of ruthless waves that will tear his body apart.

The pain that he feels is something he cannot put into words. It is on a whole other level; it surpasses his mind and his body and it strikes his very soul. It is like being out there with him, drowning amongst waves, hands torn from gripping so tightly onto the boat, his body thrown aside against jutting rocks carelessly. It feels like being torn into, torn apart, his bones broken and stretched out; his mind flayed and laid out to be ruined more intimately.

It is indescribably agony, and the only consolation comes when he stops wailing; long, haunting wails that rattle his own skull, and he goes hoarse instead; shocked, lifeless.

He bathes that night. His back leans against cold porcelain rather than David’s chest. He forgets to light a candle and he imagines this darkness is what David was submerged in as he drowned. The heavens part to weep for him and rain thunders down onto the roof, echoing like gunshots through the hollow house.

Each second that passes by sucks the life out of him. He feels like a walking corpse, nothing more than a broken skeleton puppeted on strings. He dresses in his nightgown, the one David always loved on him; pale blue, nearly white, and silky; thin and hanging off his shoulders, ghosting his ankles and just above the floor.

He sits on his bed and pulls his knees to his chest. Doesn’t touch David’s side.

Thunder booms around him. He finds himself with no energy to be afraid now. David isn’t here to comfort him, to hold him and help him sleep, to kiss his cheek and play with his hair and let him listen to the steady beat of his heart.

Klaus had never thought love could do such a thing to a person. He doesn’t know who he is anymore. He is empty save for the pain and the grief that seizes his whole being.

He loves David more than he thought was physically possible.

As lightning flashes over the cliffs behind him, he suddenly finds himself enlightened with a realisation.

He loves David; loves him right down to his bare soul. He will never find such a person as David, he will never learn to love anyone but him; he is incapable of doing so, and he doesn’t want to if he could.

He would love David in any time, in any life. But this one has come to an end.

He slides out of the cold bedsheets. His naked feet carry him down the unfamiliar, groaning staircase of this empty house, and he stands by the front door listening to the wind howl like a ghosts’ wail. When he nudges it open, the wind wrenches it nearly right off its hinges.

Outside is freezing. The storm is worse than the one that stole David. Rain plasters his nightgown to his body and soaks his hair; seeps through his skin and into his bones. He has to lift an arm to shield his face to be able to see where he is going, although that is difficult and he can only just make out the silhouettes of the land around him.

His feet crush the flowers he planted a lifetime ago; pound them into the earth as if trying to bury them. He slips in mud and catches himself on his hands and then he keeps going. He isn’t sure if he is crying or not; the rain on his face makes the water indistinguishable from the tears.

His feet carry him to where he must go. Stones dig into the soles of his feet as grass begins to give way to the uneven, rocky edge of the cliff, and hear the waves roar like a war going on a hundred feet below him. The smell of salt is dizzying. Thunder threatens to deafen him.

He is not scared. He is just so, so hurt and alone.

His chest quivers with each unsteady breath that leaves his whimpering lips. He cannot see the rocks at the bottom of the cliff; can hardly make out the waves on this dark night.

He longs for David’s arms to wind around him, to hold him warm and safe from the cold and violent world around him. But that won’t happen; not here, not now. Maybe in another place, though. Another time.

Klaus curls his toes into the sharp rocks and tangled grass. He rocks forwards; rocks backwards. His hand curls around the crystal that has hardly ever left his neck since he was given it. The last thing he has of his dear David.

Without David, this life is over; his time is done. There is no reason, no need, no motivation to carry on with it. And so he won’t.

He smiles, something broken and shaky, and he holds the crystal to his cheek as if it might imitate the way David caresses his cheek. His eyes sparkle in the flash of lightning in front of him, and then he lifts one leg, pushes off with the other, and he falls.

* * *

Klaus’ body is found the next morning.

Klaus watches the couple on their morning jog on the beach find him; battered and drenched and twisted on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. His body is taken away and yet he remains.

A cruel joke of fate to play on him. He remains at those cliffs, unseen and unheard by anybody, even when he curls up on the rocks he died on and he wails. David is not here, he is not somewhere new. Instead, he is trapped in an eternity in the shadow of their life, and there is nothing he can do about it.

Except, perhaps, wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd really love to hear your thoughts for this!! I'm super excited for it, so please let me know what you thought!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a house on a cliff somewhere, and it feels a bit like an old home.

_March, 2019._

Pulling his laptop closed with a sigh, Dave Katz turns his attention to the window to his left. The train is rapidly approaching his destination finally, after days of travelling between rural towns and hopping from taxi cab to train, and he longs to be able to finally step outside with the knowledge that he isn’t about to cramp his legs within another vehicle within an hour. The train station is a pleasant fifteen minute walk from the town itself which Dave will greatly enjoy, revelling in the chance to stretch his legs out and make his way down in his own time, and he truly is just eager for his travelling to finally come to an end, and one he hopes is permanent.

It had taken a while for him to convince himself that this was a good idea, and a lot of consistent persuasion from co-worker Eudora. He had been stuck in a standstill with his life for a long time; with no motivation, no goals, each day bleeding into the other in a repetitive blur. He had the same routine when he woke up; he woke up at the same time, he ate the same food, he showered, he watched the same show. He got changed, he went to work. He ate the same lunch at the same time, he went home, he cooked dinner and watched television, and he got a dreamless sleep. He made ends meet and it repeated in an endless cycle.

There is little joy or excitement he finds in life, and it has been this way for too long now. He longs to find a contentment within his life; longs to feel excitement and happiness again; to feel alive. He despises his daily life and the idea that he is stuck in this timeless blur for the foreseeable future while a part of him feels as if he should be elsewhere; that the place he is in is wrong, the way he spends his days is wrong.

Eudora had been nearly as fed up with his poor mood as he was, and it was with her help and encouragement that he laid out and looked over his options; considered the possibility that perhaps he isn’t as stuck as he believes; that there are places and people waiting for him elsewhere and he is allowed to chase the longing in him for something else. He had quit his dull job, packed up his bags, and left the city he had grown up in, no real goal in mind other than to see something different than dirty streets and towering skyscrapers. She had encouraged him to take a step back and look around him, take a look at himself and truly wonder what it is that he wants from life.

He still isn’t quite sure about doing this. Whatever had convinced him that night to make this split-second, life-changing decision to drop his entire life, to walk out of the place he had spent his childhood in, and go somewhere completely different. Some place where there is not a single tower or office block, a familiar street or face; where no one knows who he is, and he can start anew.

He hadn’t been so confident in his decision and had been half-tempted to just take a short vacation elsewhere and return. To think that he now found himself near the coast, planning to move to a new home in what was once nothing more than a small fishing village years ago, and had hardly grown in size or population since – it was nothing short of ridiculous. As much as he was dismissive of it, however, he couldn’t help but feel the unfamiliar sense of excitement bubble up in his chest.

He had looked through many places he had considered going to, but there had been something that had drawn him to this place in particular. He couldn’t quite place it but decided that the images he had seen of the town, something so drastically different to the city he grew up in, along with images of a beach and towering cliffs, vibrant flowers, clear skies and clean air – of course he would be drawn to such a picturesque place. Dave half-expected it to be fake; to be something plucked from a romantic movie or story.

The train slides to a stop and Dave begins to gather his stuff; slipping his laptop into its bag and sliding it over his shoulder, and then he lifts his small suitcase up and staggers down the aisle to the nearest door. He steps out of the train and into the shade of the small station, and he is the only person to get off. The train carries itself away behind him, and Dave turns his gaze forwards.

His eyes squint against the sun holding itself over the town resting at the bottom of a path flanked by trees and shrubbery. Exhaling slowly, taking in this new sight laid out in front of him, Dave begins to walk down.

Despite being a fairly small town, as he approaches it seems to be bustling with life. The streets are busy with people wandering, weaving in and out of shops and buildings. There is a market set up in the town centre, little stalls selling jewellery and decorations, and almost everywhere he looks he sees vibrant flowers growing. He narrowly avoids a group of children running past him, eyes locked onto a stall selling little bags of mixed candy. The further into town he gets, the more he can pick up the smell of salt on the air, carried in from the beach not far from the town.

The breeze feels refreshing on his skin and the air is fresher than it ever had been in the city. Everything feels cleaner here, and finally stepping into the town he begins to think that maybe this really was a good decision to make. For the first time in a long time, he feels something akin to excitement bubbling up inside of him. He allows himself to wander the streets leisurely, taking in the sight of short buildings and vibrant colours; the feel of sun on his skin and a breeze running its fingers through his hair.

He has seen pictures of this town, but he has never actually visited it in person before. One might call his decision to move here impulsive because of this, but maybe the impulsiveness of this is what Dave needs. And somehow, Dave finds himself slipping into this place as if he has been here before; it feels infinitely more comfortable and welcoming than his old city ever has been. His feet carry him through the streets as if they know where they are going. It feels like visiting a childhood home after years of growing up and moving elsewhere. Tension bleeds out of his muscles and he cannot conjure up hardly a single anxiety or doubt about having chosen the wrong place to go to. Ever since he had seen this town, seen the pictures of it, and spoken to a lovely realtor named Hazel, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that this was the place he was meant to be; where he was meant to end up inevitably.

His first stop is the motel he had already booked a room in. He finds it just down from the town’s centre. There is only the one motel in the entire town and it is better than any Dave has been in before; the bed is comfortable and the room is decorated to be homely and welcoming. Dave doesn’t bother unpacking; he doesn’t plan to spend more than one or two nights in here and so he doesn’t see the point in bothering to. He sets his suitcase at the foot of his bed, sets his laptop bag on the little table nearby the window, and then he simply stands in the room.

This decision has weighed down on his shoulders since Eudora had brought it up to him, and he had expected to only feel regret once he finally arrived. It is nearly relieving, however, to realise that now, standing in this room days away from the crowded slate-grey city, he feels that weight has lessened. He exhales slowly and wiggles his fingers by his side, then stretches them out.

At that moment, his phone vibrates in his pocket. He tugs it out, a smile tilting his lips when he sees a text message from Eudora. He is eager to reply, announcing his safe arrival in the town, and she must somehow be able to pick up on his tone through the words on her screen because she matches his enthusiasm. He wishes he could phone her, and he tells her this, but a glance at the time tells him that he hasn’t got long until he is supposed to meet Allison.

There are three houses they agreed to check out for him, all just waiting for someone to move in, and Dave is eager to see them and eager to be able to start settling in. It is as if finally arriving to this place has shoved all doubts from his mind and the idea of ever returning back to that old bleak city of before sounds insane. Why would he ever want to leave this place? His house – his home – is out there, waiting for him, and he is eager to find it and move into it.

He taps his pockets, ensuring he has everything he needs, and then he steps back out of his motel room and begins to make his way down to the coffee shop Allison had agreed to meet him at initially.

“New face,” comments the man behind the counter, offering a smile. “Visiting?”

Dave drops his gaze down to the name tag on the man’s shirt. _Ben_ , it reads, and so Dave looks up again and offers a smile to him. “I’m actually here to look at the houses for sale,” he states, and Ben raises his eyebrows.

“Oh, really?” He says, sounding excited. “It’s always nice to have someone new come by; shake things up a bit.”

Dave bobs his head in agreement, allowing his eyes to flit around the warmly lit café. “Yeah, well, I think I’ll like it here.”

“I hope so,” says Ben. “But you’re probably here for a reason – what can I get you?”

Dave orders a coffee to go, and he sits by the front window near the door until it opens with a song from the chimes by it, and in steps a woman that looks like she belongs more in the city Dave came from rather than this little town. Dave wonders if she thinks that too, though, because she notices him immediately. He wonders if he sticks out like a sore thumb, and part of him is upset by that thought; he belongs here, he thinks.

“Mr. Katz,” she says, nimble fingers pulling off a pair of sunglasses which she folds and holds by her side in one hand; the other reaches out across the table. Dave rises, shaking her hand.

“Dave, please.”

“Dave it is, then,” she grins, and slides into the chair opposite him. “Thanks for meeting me here; small town, we’re all a close-knit community. Things run a little differently down here.”

“It’s a real nice place,” Dave states. His eyes stray to the window, overlooking the sun bathing the place in a soft glow, and the park opposite the coffee shop where kids laugh and play. “I like it here.”

“I’m certainly glad to hear that,” Allison comments, folding her hands together on the table. “Big change from what you’re used to, huh?”

“You could say that,” he snorts. “But a pleasant change. I wasn’t sure how I’d like it, but… I think I will.”

Allison smiles at him, painted lips turning up and brown eyes soft. “Well, how about I show you that first house?” She suggests, and Dave nods eagerly. He rises to his feet and smiles at Ben when he steps towards the door, and Ben nods his head in acknowledgement and a goodbye to him.

Outside, he falls into step beside Allison, and her heels click loudly on the floor with each step she takes. Somewhere nearby, a seagull caws loudly. “Depending on how much you like to walk, everything is pretty much in walking distance. This first house here is ten minutes from that little coffee shop. One bedroom, one bathroom, all on one floor but you have an attic big enough to store things away in there, or you could probably do it up and make it into a small study.”

Dave hums, and follows Allison as she brings him to an off-white house with a short front garden that needs some weeding, he thinks. A short cobbled path leads up to a door that he only just doesn’t have to duck his head to fit through, and it opens out to a cosy living room with an old fireplace, joined next to a mint-green kitchen with windows overlooking the street. The bathroom is small with little natural light filtering in through a slim window. The bedroom is small, too; a little too small for his liking. The bed takes up the majority of the floor space and the positioning of the bedroom doesn’t allow for much natural light or a view from the windows, and he feels a draft sneak in around his ankles. The attic space is short and dark, and the house doesn’t sit well with him overall.

It must be written all over his face. “Not your cup of tea?” Allison jokes, eyebrows raised.

Snorting, Dave says, “how about we check out another one?”

“After you,” Allison says, holding the door open for him to step back outside.

He doesn’t actually quite know what kind of house he is looking for; he has been so used to apartments that he has never really imagined himself living in a proper house. A garden would be nice, he thinks, and perhaps not centre in the town either, though Allison doesn’t take him closer in that direction.

The next house is slightly bigger, with two bedrooms instead of the one, and two bathrooms to match. It has a short back garden, but the house casts the garden in a dark shadow. It offers a nice view of the road leading down towards the beach, but little more. He steps inside and inspects the rooms as Allison lets him, but he feels as if he doesn’t need to check to know that this isn’t the house for him. It irritates him a little; he had this feeling deep within his gut that told him this town was the place he was supposed to be, but the idea of any of settling in these houses is uncomfortable; it almost feels wrong. These houses aren’t for him, no matter how much he likes the layout of the kitchen or the bathrooms or the fence outside.

“It’s a big decision to make,” Allison tells him, as if she truly is able to just read his thoughts like an open book. “And there’s no rush to make it. The houses aren’t going anywhere; you’ll need to think it through, of course.”

“I know,” sighs Dave, staring at the front door. The house is nice. It isn’t too big and empty for him to end up feeling lonely living there by himself; it looks nice, too, and the garden is nice if more light got into it. It is a good distance from the centre of the town where he won’t have floods of people wandering past all day, but close enough where it is an easy walk to get anywhere he needs. Nonetheless, it just doesn’t sit with him. He cannot see himself feeling comfortable falling asleep every night in that house; can’t see himself calling it his home.

“Are there any others?” He asks, turning to look at Allison half-desperately.

“Well,” she says. “There are a couple more. One of them is closer to the outskirts; nearby the train station you came in from, and there is one house on the cliffs for sale, too. That one is closer, if you want to check it out first, but it’s been for sale for quite some time now.”

Dave perks up slightly, relieved that he hasn’t truly come here just to hit a dead-end and have to leave feeling more defeated and lost than before. “Oh?” He muses, his eyes flicking in the direction of the cliff and, sure enough, if he squints he can make out the silhouette of a building from where he stands. “Any reason why?”

Allison steps out onto the pavement and he joins her, and together they begin the walk in the direction of the cliffs. “Not so popular, I suppose,” she says, and her eyes don’t meet his. “It’s an old house. Makes noise at night, and on top of those cliffs, it’s isolating. It hasn’t had a solid resident in it for – god, decades.”

Dave quirks an eyebrow at her. “Just how old is it?” He asks. Allison’s lips purse in thought.

“Oh, well, it must have been built in the late eighteen-hundreds,” she states. “Used to be for an old fisher, usually, but it simply isn’t such a popular house now. It needs some work to it, I won’t lie. The last person to live there was in two-thousand and one. Hasn’t been touched since. It’s been worked up – you’ve got electricity and plumbing, don’t worry about that.” She offers a soft laugh then, and she leans forwards in her step as the ground begins to curve upwards beneath their feet, carrying them higher above and farther from the town behind them.

“Glad to hear that,” Dave comments with a brief chuckle. “What’s the problem with it, then?”

“Hm?”

“The problem with it,” he repeats. “If it hasn’t been touched in eighteen years, and hardly before then, I’m assuming there’s a problem with it. Are the cliffs stable?”

“Cliffs are stable so long as you don’t toe right up against the edge,” Allison nods her head. “The waves are loud from up here, crashing against the cliffs. We get storms out here that can come at a moment’s notice and make it hard to leave the house. Up here, it can be unnerving alone like that. Guess people just don’t like it.”

Dave hums. Then; “no one died in it, right?”

Allison barks a laugh, eyes crinkling at the corners. She shakes her head. “No, no,” she promises. “No one died inside it.”

Dave is curious to see it, now. He can only imagine what the view from the house must be like, overlooking the sea at such a height. The air gets a little cooler, more heavy with the smell of salt, and it reminds him of being out on a beach itself. He indeed can hear the waves crashing like Allison mentioned, growing louder with each step they take up the cliffs. It must be peaceful, though, being out here with nothing but the sea below. It isn’t too long of a walk from the town either, although his lungs struggle initially once they finally step out over the hill and onto the flatter land of the top of the cliff, and his calves burn with the effort.

“Free gym, walking up and down that,” jokes Dave, and a little breathlessly, Allison laughs.

“Oh, you’d get fit, no doubt,” she agrees, and then she spreads a hand out in front of her. “This is it. It’s a fixer-upper, and I honestly wouldn’t waste your time with it. The one by the station is more likely something you’d like…”

Dave’s eyes fall onto the house in front of him, and he pauses.

The house is, evidently, old. There is peeling paint all over the porch and the wooden stairs look as if they might crack beneath his feet. The house is sat in the middle of a field of half-dead plants that obviously haven’t had anyone to tend for them for a long time; only a few are still clinging miraculously onto life, curling in on themselves and pale and fragile against the wind that rushes over the edge of the cliff beyond the house. And, to his side, Dave notices what must be a shed that looks as if it is one gust of wind away from being blown over.

It would take a lot of work to do this up, he thinks as he approaches it. His hand ghosts over the support beam of the porch, then he reaches out and picks off a flake of pale paint and watches it crumble to the ground. Beneath his feet, the stairs creak and groan.

Allison hurries to his side, reaching out to unlock the door for him. It squeals on its hinges and needs to be nudged firmly to open properly, and standing in the corridor the door opens into, Dave has the distinct feeling of stepping into a long-abandoned house. He almost feels like he is trespassing.

He follows the corridor down, poking his head into the rooms either side. There is a kitchen and dining room to the left and cobwebs clinging to the windows, and the counters look incredibly old. He runs his fingertips over them gently and half-expects an inch of pure dust to come off onto them, and is surprised when it is only small traces.

He can spot a hundred problems easily as he walks through the house. Floorboards creak and moan and there are wall trims that need to be fixed; windows that need to be sorted; places that need to be re-painted. He’ll have to change the lock on the back door, and the light by the back door, too. The study is in disarray and he longs to reach out and be able to fix it. There is a desk against the left wall and he thinks that it is wrong being there; it ought to be by the window. That is where it is supposed to be.

The living room sits at the end of the corridor and from the windows Dave can see the edge of the cliffs just up ahead, covered in a mess of dead flora, and beyond that, he can see waves. The sun glistens brightly over them and even from the living room Dave can hear them crashing together at the bottom of the cliffs far below his feet.

There is a fireplace in the living room, and an old television he thinks doesn’t fit in the room. He can imagine lighting that fire as it gets darker at night, and settling down in front of it to read a book, calmed by the sound of the waves below him. He could lift his gaze from the book and be greeted by the sight of inky waves around his house reflecting the stars in the sky and it would be like living suspended in space.

“It’s definitely got a nice view,” Allison comments, and he had forgotten she was there. “You can see better from upstairs, too.”

Dave quirks an eyebrow at her, not remembering seeing a staircase, and she guides him back to the front door and through a door that leads to a staircase. Allison ascends them easily and Dave takes slow, measured steps up each one, and his hand reaches out to his side to run across the wall beside him. The stairs groan slightly beneath his weight and Dave has the faint impression of the house being disturbed and woken up. If that was the case, then he could only hope that it wasn’t protesting his presence.

The bedroom is large, larger than he needs it to be, but there is a bathroom in the corner as well and it would be easy enough to figure out how to fill the empty space of the room. There is a bed already in the room, settled against the far wall by the window, and he steps right up to it. Just like Allison said, the view is better from up here; he can see down to the beach to his left, and he can see people on the beach in the form of small, moving dots, and he can see boats out on the waves.

“There’s still that other house we can check out,” Allison comments, watching him curiously. She seems almost apologetic to have brought him here. “It’s a lot of work one house needs; isn’t really worth the hassle.”

“No,” says Dave, a little sharply. He shakes his head, waves one hand to dismiss that statement. “No, it’s not that bad.”

Allison quirks an eyebrow at him. “It’s a project,” she says. “It’d certainly keep you busy.”

Dave hums, running his eyes over the room. It could be nice, he thinks, with a little bit of work and some decorations. He could imagine himself coming up here from the town, walking up the cliff and stepping inside and getting comfortable; he could imagine himself coming upstairs at night and settling into bed and listening to the waves and letting them lull him to sleep. He can imagine waking up to the sound, can imagine living here; can imagine calling this place home.

He could bring life back to the plants around, could do up the paint where needed, bring in some new furniture and rearrange some rooms until they feel right. He can imagine what needs to be done, can picture it when it is all finally done.

“I like this one,” Dave says, nodding his head. “I like this.”

Allison spreads her hands out in a gesture, shrugging softly. “It could be nice,” she agrees. “We can always come back to it; there’s still that other house we can check out. I think you’d also like this one.”

Dave shakes his head. He can’t imagine turning his back on this house now; can’t imagine feeling like he does with another house. He feels excitement surge through him with the realisation that he has found what he’s searching for, and he smiles when he says, “I think this is the one, really.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to at least check out the other one?” Allison asks, and Dave continues to shake his head.

“This is it,” he states. “I can feel it. This is the one. I’ll take this.”

With a smile, Allison nods. “As long as you’re sure. Maybe you’ll be the one to fix this place up for good.”

“I’d like to try,” Dave says, and Allison tips her head to the direction of the stairs.

“If you’re sure then, how about we go seal this up then?”

Grinning, Dave follows her outside. “I’d love to.”

He understands that cleaning the place up won’t be easy; the plants around are dead and wild, and the shed outside the house has been battered by the wind and not cared for in years. He can imagine that it would be cold and dark at nights, and that the house will come to life with the wind, moaning and groaning and shifting. But he can also imagine what it would be like to wander through a neat garden alive with vibrant flowers, to walk down a hall with paintings that add a splash of colour to the place hung up on the walls. He can imagine settling down at nights in the warmth of the fireplace in the living room and then retreating up the stairs to fall asleep to the sound of waves. He can imagine inviting Eudora over, and hosting a little cook-out with anyone he might befriend in this town, and sitting outside on the cliff with everyone on a warm summer’s day.

Allison lets him know where he can find help for the house – a man named Diego owns a shop and business and is always willing to help. A man named Luther owns a gardening shop just off the centre of the town should he want to start work on the garden. He decides that he will start tomorrow, but for now he finds himself once more at Ben’s little coffee shop, and the man welcomes him back warmly.

“How’d house searching go?” He asks, absently wiping down his counter. “There’s a good few houses around to settle into.”

“It went well,” Dave nods, and when Ben holds up a mug and mouths _coffee?_ Dave nods once more.

“Found one then?” Ben asks, and Dave watches as he busies himself making his coffee.

“Oh, yeah,” he hums. “That one up on the cliffs; it’s all mine now.”

Ben pauses at that, giving Dave a shocked look. “Oh, really? Well, the old thing’s been untouched for as long as I can remember, probably about time someone tries it out again.”

“I think it’s nice,” he says. “With a little bit of work it could be perfect. It’s a nice place.”

Ben hums; slides his coffee over to him. “It could be,” he agrees. “I’m sure Diego will love having someone working on it again; he owns that shop down the street. He’d love to help you out, I’m sure.”

“Allison mentioned him – and Luther, for the gardening. I’ll get around to checking the place out and talking to them tomorrow.”

“Oh, Luther will have a field day with that place,” he snorts. “One owner must have just gone wild with plants ages ago. You know, if you check out the library you can probably find a photograph of it when it wasn’t so,” he waves a hand, searching for a word, and Dave offers;

“Abandoned?”

With a soft chuckle, Ben nods. “Yeah, that. Well, glad to see you managed to pick a place so quickly. I’m sure everyone will be excited to hear someone’s moving into that old thing.”

Dave takes his coffee and he can’t help but to smile. “Thanks,” he says. “I’m glad to have found it.”

Ben nods, then waves a hand. “Go on, sit down. I’ll see you around the place.”

Although he is eager to get there and settle into what is now his house, he returns to the motel room he has. The sun dips low on the horizon and he watches it from his window and he can only imagine what it is like from the cliffs. He clambers into bed at night listening to the faint sound of an occasional car driving past nearby, and wishes it was the sound of waves instead.

That feeling of being lost and out of place doesn’t feel so strong anymore, and he wonders if he has found where he is supposed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts! <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave meets a man named Diego and begins work on his new home, and ponders all of those ghost stories Diego had mentioned about his house, even if there are no such things as ghosts.

Dave finds Diego in the back of his store sharpening a knife behind a counter. The action ought to make him hesitate, and he does wonder why he might have need of sharpening a knife at nine in the morning, but he doesn’t question it.

With his approach the man lifts his head from his task, though doesn’t stop, and raises an eyebrow. “You’re new here,” he states, and Dave chuckles softly.

“That obvious, huh?”

Diego shrugs, briefly looking back down at the blade in his hands. “Small place, I’ve never seen you around before,” he simply says. Finally, he stops scraping the knife along the whetstone and sets both aside, coming closer to fix his attention on Dave. He holds out a hand. “Diego,” he introduces. “But you probably got that from the sign outside.”

Offering a small smile, Dave shakes his hand. “I did,” he confirms with a chuckle. “Dave.”

“Well, nice to see someone new around here. What can I do for you, Dave?”

“I just moved here,” he states. “And my house needs some work.” A pause. “Quite a bit of work, actually. I was told you’d be able to help.”

“Oh, sure,” Diego muses pleasantly, nodding his head. “I’ll have to check it out first, unless you’ve got an idea of what needs to be done. Where about did you move into?”

“We can go and check it out,” Dave agrees, glancing to the door. “Definitely a paint job, a couple of windows might need to be resealed, some baseboards need fixed – honestly, it’d be easier if you just came to look it over. I’m in that house up on the cliffs.”

Diego nods his head as Dave talks but at the mention of what house he has moved into, he pauses, raising his eyebrows. “Really?” He says, exhaling. “Huh.”

“I’ve gotten a lot of those kinds of responses,” Dave comments. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“Oh, well, it’s not _bad_ ,” Diego says, waving his comment aside. “It just… doesn’t have a track record of being good.”

Dave snorts. “So I’ve heard. Everyone makes it out to be the secret lair of some serial killer; how bad can a building be?”

Diego chuckles at that, rounding the counter. “Eh, depends if you’re a sceptic or not. But I’ve been dying to get my hands on that old thing; let’s check it out.”

Dave quirks an eyebrow, following Diego outside, and together they start the walk back up to his house. “What do you mean by that?” He asks.

“By what?”

“Depends if I’m a sceptic,” he repeats, and Diego hums.

“I’m going to assume you’ve not heard much about the house?”

Narrowing his eyes, Dave says, “Allison told me it’s been around since the late eighteen-hundreds, and that it’s not been touched since two-thousand and one.”

“Right she is,” Diego agrees. “You not wondered why it’s not been touched since – nice thing, up on the cliffs. With only some work it could be a pretty damn good house.”

“Of course I have, but it’s a _house_ ,” Dave retorts. “But that’s what I thought. Allison mentioned checking out Luther’s gardening shop at some point. It’d be nice to bring all those plants back to life.”

Diego hums. “Oh, yeah. There’s some old picture around in the library – black and white, of course, just before the first world war, but the house looks incredible in it. I’d be nice to see it like that again; it’s eerie up there now. A single house on a clifftop, surrounded by a shit ton of dead plants, half-crumbling apart; it’s typical horror-story stuff.”

Dave snorts. “It’s not _that_ bad,” he insists. He doesn’t see the horror-story side to the house; if anything, it looks tragic and heart-breaking. Isolated on the cliff-tops, it must be lonely, and it was evidently once cared for with love and had once been vibrant and full of life. The image of it now, wilting and neglected, makes something in Dave incredibly sad, as if he is looking at his own home that has been reduced to ruins.

“It could be better, though,” Diego counters.

“Alright, alright – you’ve still not told me something, though,” Dave replies, giving him a look. “What is it that you’re not telling me?”

He has to dig his feet into the ground a little as they ascend the steeper path to the cliff, leaning a little further forwards. Diego shrugs half-heartedly. “Old folk stories, is all. Got to be expected with a house like that one.”

Dave quirks an eyebrow. “Old stories like what?” He asks, though he relaxes slightly, relieved that there isn’t actually some serious history to the house that turns everyone away from it that he simply isn’t being told. Like Diego said; an abandoned house atop a cliff, it’s only to be expected that people would come up with stories for its backstory.

Once more, Diego offers a shrug, narrowing his eyes against the sun as they come over the hill. “A few different ones, really. Some people say there was an attack on previous owners, or a murder, or something, but there’s no records of any murders there – don’t worry about that. Some people say that something happened to one owner and they committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs, and that they now haunt the place. Some say the people who live in the house start feeling called to the edge of the cliffs and get impulses to jump, too. Stories about the cliffs being a suicide spot for a ton of people; stuff like that. Y’know, sad backstories with consequential hauntings. Nothing serious, but apparently serious enough to freak some people out.”

Dave gives Diego a look and the man stops chuckling. “You don’t believe all that, do you?” He asks, cringing, and Dave sarcastically rolls his eyes.

“Of course not,” he says. “The house is over a hundred years old; I can’t imagine it’s particularly quiet at night, and you can hear the waves well from it, too.”

Diego hums. “Well, that’s a relief. Last guy who lived there got so spooked out by himself up there that he moved to a different town entirely.”

Dave gives Diego an incredulous look, raising his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“Mhmm. If you ask me, I say the house just draws paranoid people who get too invested in ghost stories. Don’t know if you’ve met Ben yet, but he’s all over the stories; he’d talk your ear off about them. Vanya, too; she works at the library.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve met Ben – I’ve not seen the library yet. Ben seems nice.”

“He is,” says Diego. His eyes bounce over the house looming over them. Yesterday, the place had seemed so welcoming to him; eager to invite him inside, to let him look around and explore and settle in. Now, it seems to glare at him with its very being; the building towers over them and casts them in a dark, cold shadow, as if angry with his presence, and he can’t help it as a shiver runs down his spine.

Diego and Dave wander around the perimeter of the house, eying it up; the porch out front and the one near the back of the house.

“You moved in yet?” Asks Diego, and Dave hums.

“Not yet. I’m staying in the motel – probably will be for another night or two, though I might bring my stuff up here tonight. I’ve not got much to move, anyway.”

“How about we check inside and make sure it’s all good for you to move into, then?” He suggests, and Diego nods in agreement. He leads the way inside, then begins to point out his main areas of concern. Diego goes around inspecting the place, prodding at windows and baseboards and doorframes with an expert’s eye. They head upstairs and Diego does the same there, but upstairs seems to be in better condition.

“Might be a bit noisy and you might get a few drafts, but nothing’s going to collapse on you,” he says. “If you want to get started as soon as possible, I can go back down, grab some stuff and just get started. I should be able to get most, if not all of it, done by tonight – at least the windows and baseboards, anyway.”

Dave perks up at the idea and when Diego offers his prices, cheaper than Dave would ever find in the old city, he jumps at the chance. The quicker the place becomes liveable the better, he thinks, and then he can focus on making the place a proper home, too.

He and Diego return to town, Diego gathering what he needs to fix the windows and the baseboards as well as getting a couple of helpers, while Dave gets what he needs to fix the paint on the porches, deciding that he can do that easily enough himself. With a moment of hesitation, Dave ends up also returning to the motel to gather his stuff and then pauses when he passes one of the town’s few grocery stores. If Diego and others will be working on his house for long, then the least he can do is offer some drinks and food – and if he’s hoping to settle in, then he’ll need to buy groceries anyway.

He returns to his house with his suitcase, laptop, and his hands full of groceries and paint supplies, as well as new bedsheets. He nods a greeting to Diego and the others, already at work, and first begins to set the groceries away in the plain kitchen. He’ll need to get more soon, he knows, but it is enough to do him for a few days at least and gives him something to offer the workers helping him. He sets his personal belongings upstairs by the bed, and then he steps outside to the front porch, supplies in hand, and begins to sand away the cracked and peeling paint.

The house still feels uneasy for some reason. He had hoped subconsciously that perhaps having other people in the house would help liven it up a little – make it seem less intimidating and suddenly cold, but it seems to not have worked. With that train of thought, Dave stares down at the paint bucket he is pulling the lid off and has to chuckle at himself. He must have internalised Diego’s talk about silly ghost stories and gotten himself irrationally wound up.

He forces the tension from his shoulders, pictures what the house will look like when it is all done, and then dips a brush in the paint and drags it over freshly-sanded wood.

He manages to lose himself in the repetitive, calming motion of his task, and by the time he acknowledges the rough tickle in his throat he has already finished half of the front porch. He blinks, surprised with himself, and then he sets the brush down carefully, as to not splatter any paint where he doesn’t want it, and then steps inside. He pours himself a glass of water and then peers out the doorway and down the corridor to see Diego and the others still hard at work. One of them has brought a small speaker with them, playing music, and Dave doesn’t have a problem with it.

Instead, he sets about making coffee for them all, trying to make it as neutral as he can so they all like it, and then he carries them all out expertly without spilling a drop. He sets them all on the old coffee table near them all and says, “I’ll make some lunch later, if you have any requests.”

The men turn eagerly to the coffee, offering a grateful thanks, and Diego says, “as long as it’s edible, we’ll eat anything.”

“I’m sure I can try that,” he jokes, and leaves them to their work. Floorboards groan loudly beneath his feet as he returns to the porch outside and presumes his work where he left off; sanding the wood down to smooth perfection and then spreading out new coats of paint over it, covering all the imperfections of years of neglect.

He makes a quick and easy lunch for them all, and Dave sticks around in the living room with Diego and the others – whom he learns are called Hazel (a giant of a man that is inches above Dave and with shoulders broad enough he wonders how he managed to slip through the door without turning sideways) and an older man named Al.

“I had just about accepted that this house was just going to sit up here and rot,” Hazel comments. “Won’t say it’s not good to see it getting down up, though. Everyone’s been acting like it’s some curse over the town,” he scoffs.

“Does everyone think this house is really that bad?” Dave asks, half-jokingly. His first impression of the house had been completely optimistic, and yet everyone he has spoken to so far has almost looked at him as if he is crazy for deciding to pick this house over any of the ones in the town. The ghost stories are just the icing on top of this cake, and he finds himself slowly getting more irritated with everyone’s quiet judgement; he finds himself feeling defensive over the house. He has found a place that he feels comfortable in and that feels safe and welcoming to him, and he doesn’t like people continuing to judge it, but he forces himself not to overthink it or get himself worked up over it.

“Oh, I’m just saying,” says Hazel, waving a hand dismissively. “I mean, it’s not that bad; it’s just got that reputation and people like to make up stories for things like this.”

Dave simply responds with a nonchalant hum and a shrug, and finishes eating. “Do you know anyone who lived here?” He asks, curious.

“I knew the last guy,” says Al, voice gruff. Dave hasn’t known him for long, but he can tell that he isn’t much of a talker, and he looks like the kind of guy to enjoy sitting down with a beer to watch football by himself, but at least now he is conversational enough. “Younger guy, younger than you, and looking for some place to get inspiration for some book he was writing. Lasted about six months here before just getting up in the middle of the night and leaving. Before him there was five years between him and the previous owner before him.”

“Well, guess it’s my job to try and clean this place up then,” he simply states, lifting his head a little with confidence. Diego offers him a small smile at that, finishes his sandwich, and then stands up, clapping his hands on his thighs.

“In that case, we better get back to work,” he states, and Dave nods his agreement.

He finishes the front porch, smoothing down all of the wood and giving it a first coat of pale paint, and so he then turns his attention to the one by the backdoor of the house, repeating the same process of taking off the chipped paint, smoothing the wood out and then cleaning it up with a new coat of paint. It becomes less of an eye-sore to look at, more neat and clean, and it settles something inside of him. He feels pleased with his work, though knows he’ll have to come back and do another coat once this one has dried, but for now he knows he is doing something right and that it will all be well worth it in the end, even if he has ruined this shirt he wears with splatters of paint.

By the time the sun begins to dip low in the sky, slowly sinking closer to the sea to disappear beneath the distant waves, Diego and the others have finished their job with the windows and had gotten half-way through the baseboards. Dave wonders if they were as eager as him to try and fix this place up. He gives them a fair tip, and Diego leaves with the promise that the baseboards can be finished swiftly tomorrow, and then they part.

Dave is left standing in his empty house, paint splattered across his arms, and he finds himself finally able to exhale.

He chases away the shadows in the house, flicking on a couple of hanging lights, and then he simply lingers in the living room. There is dust to clean up after the work done by the windows, and dust in general that has gathered to be cleaned up. He’ll need to fix the paint in some areas around a couple of windows that had been worked on, and the house is utterly bare save for very minimal furniture. Isn’t quite a home, not yet, but soon, he tells himself.

It is nearly silent when he makes his way to the kitchen, pulling out enough ingredients to cook together a quick meal for himself after scrubbing the paint from his skin. Wind whistles against the walls from outside, caressing the windows, and the house seems to let out a quiet sigh, as if it had been holding its breath. The tension he had felt earlier has lessened, but only slightly, but he finds it easy enough to shrug off when he focuses on cooking and taking his food through to the living room.

He sits down on the old leather couch opposite the fireplace and turns his gaze to the window. Over a field of dead, withered plants, and over the sharp, unforgiving drop of the cliff, the sun kisses the sea and paints the sky in a fiery explosion of warm reds and oranges, and the sea reflects it all, making it look as if the waves have caught aflame. There are a few wandering people he can make out in the form of small specks on the beach just in his sight, and he makes it one of his priorities to go check it out – perhaps tomorrow.

Breaking through his thoughts, his phone vibrates and rings loudly in his pocket; he startles and manages to expertly catch his cutlery as it topples off his plate before it can hit the ground. Snorting at himself, he tugs his phone out and smiles at the caller ID before setting it on speaker phone.

“Hey, Katz,” says Eudora. “Already so caught up in your new life you forgot about me?”

“’Course not, ‘Dora,” he says, a grin tugging his lips up, and he can picture her rolling her eyes.

“Ever gonna give up on that nickname?” She asks.

“Never. And no, I’m sorry about not calling – got caught up in fixing the house,” he tells her, and hurries to take a quick, subtle bite of his dinner. “A few windows needed to be checked out and I did a first coat of paint over the porches.”

“Already picked out a house, then?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dave says. “I’ll send you some pictures in the morning, if you’d like – I’m sure you’d like it. It needs some work done to it, but I think it’s going to turn out great.”

“Yeah?” Hums Eudora. “It’ll be good to have a project to keep you busy. And you already sound so much better – I told you this was the right thing to do.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You told me so,” Dave chuckles. “It’s the weirdest thing; I just walked into this house and something just… clicked. I didn’t – and still don’t – care about the work it needs to polish it up, but compared to the other houses I could have got, it was probably in the worst condition. Realtor told me the house has been around since the late eighteen-hundreds.”

“Oh,” she says, tone light. “So what you’re telling me is you moved into a haunted house?”

Dave groans, head tipping back. “God, you sound like the entire town here,” he scoffs.

“So,” she repeats, “what you’re telling me is you were told this was a haunted house, multiple times, and still moved in?”

Rolling his eyes, Dave says, “it’s a house. It’s a nice one, too; it’s a shame it’s just been forgotten about, basically. No one’s lived in it for a while. I think – I think it’ll be real nice once I’ve fixed it up.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” says Eudora. “What else have you got to do for it?”

Humming, Dave twirls his fork between his fingers. “It’s nearly completely empty, obviously. Need to get some furniture, replace some that is here, get some paintings, I think. Add a bit of colour in. There’s a huge garden around it, but the plants have all died. I’m no gardener, but I think I’ll try and miraculously revive the plants. And, hey, get this – the house is on the cliffs by the beach we saw.”

“Really? Shit, some view you must get.”

His eyes stray to the window again, and the fiery sky and sea stretching forever below his home, and his lips tug upwards. “You’d love it,” he tells her. “You’ll have to come visit sometime soon.”

“When I’ve got the time off work, you know I’ll be there,” Eudora says. “How about the town? Made any friends yet?”

“Everyone’s real nice. A bit… odd, but welcoming. It’s such a change from the city.”

“I can tell – you sound alive for once,” jokes Eudora, and Dave snorts. “I was half-convinced you were some robot or zombie.”

“Alright,” he scoffs, and he can hear the smile in her words. “Yes, you were right, I think this was the best thing I could have done, really. But don’t you think this means you can just get rid of me now, huh? I’ll make sure to keep extra pillows and blankets for you to use.”

“Just for me? How generous,” she jokes, and Dave grins.

“Just for you.”

“Is this you telling me you’re never coming back to the city?”

“I can happily say that this place is much better.”

He stands up, wandering first around the coffee table and then to the window beside the fireplace. He leans against it, busying his eyes with watching the rolling waves in the distance. He can’t help but wonder just how steep the drop of the cliff is; how far down it looks from the edge, and how sharp it looks from the beach. He supposes he can check it out tomorrow. He wants to explore it a little more, and he’s never been to a beach before in his life.

He can imagine himself going down in the summer, as the temperature begins to pick up, and wading out into the waves he sees now, sand melting between his toes and letting the water cool down his skin hot from the touch of the sun over his head, and maybe Eudora would even come down and they could have a picnic out on the beach. Although she might thrive in a city, he’s sure she would enjoy the break to a peaceful little place like here.

“Yeah, well, I’m glad to hear that, Dave. Really. I’m happy to hear you’re feeling better already. It’s late now, though, and I need to go get some food but I wanted to check in on you. Set up your laptop and we can video call tomorrow, yeah?”

Tearing his eyes away from the sea and the hypnotic form of rolling waves, Dave hums. “Yes ma’am, you got it,” he jokes. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, ‘Dora. Sleep well.”

“You two, Katz,” she responds, and then hangs up. Dave lets his phone linger by his ear for a moment before dropping it down by his side and stuffing it into his pocket.

He does feel a bit as if he has suddenly come alive. He has never felt like this before, stuck in that dreadful city in an endless, repetitive job with no end in sight. He had felt like he was simply moving forwards in an endless see of monotony, living life in a dreary greyscale, and breaking free of that place and coming here feels as if he has been set free and is able to find his feet; find himself.

That thought alone spurs excitement inside of him he never knew he could feel. His fingertips tingle and he can’t stop smiling.

He’ll find himself here, he thinks. There are good things in store for him here.

Watching the waves crash, Dave finishes his dinner, sets the dishes in the sink, and heads upstairs.

He’ll have to consider getting a new bedframe; this one creaks when he moves, but for now it will do. He changes the bedsheets for the freshly bought ones and then crawls underneath them. The bed is set by the window at the far end of the room, opposite the staircase and overlooking the cliffs and the sea, and somehow he thinks the waves sound louder here. He sits up for a while, simply watching the sun get lower and the sky melt into different colours.

His mind strays back to what Diego had told him today; about those silly ghost stories. He has never believed in such a thing, and he doesn’t still. Nonetheless, he has to wonder where the stories originated from. His eyes flick to the edge of the cliff, as if expecting to see someone there, but of course it is empty.

Dave sinks lower into his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Stars begin to peek out at him from the shadows of the sky, curious and twinkling. The sound of the waves crashing far below him wash over him until his eyes slip closed and they lull him to sleep.

In the moment before he falls asleep, despite feeling as if he has returned home, he can’t help but think something is still wrong – missing. But the feeling is fleeting and drowned out by the crash of a wave that tips him over into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone loves a good ghost story, right?  
> If you like this, feel free to let me know with a kudos or a comment; it's greatly appreciated! <3


	4. Chapter 4

“You gone down to the beach yet?”

Dave hums, looking at Ben as he comes over and sets a coffee down in front of him, followed by a bagel, and then he tucks the tray beneath his arm, trapping it in place. “Not yet,” answers Dave with a shake of his head. “Been busy with the house – I was gonna start on the garden today.”

“Ooh,” Ben hums. “Fair enough. Luther’ll be over the moon, you have to give him a visit at the shop.”

Tapping his fingers on his coffee, Dave says, “next stop. Heard he’s good.”

“Never met a more passionate gardener.”

“Can he work some magic on the jungle I’ve got up there?”

“Give him an hour and it’ll look magnificent,” Ben laughs. “How’s it going, though?”

Dave hums, pursing his lips on the rim of his coffee. It has been a few days since he settled down, days he has spent mostly with Diego and his colleagues, combing the house top to bottom to ensure it isn’t about to cave in on him or that he isn’t about to get hypothermia from a broken window during the night, and he’d spent hours into each night painting. Both porches were done, thankfully, and he was about half way through his bedroom. Diego had moved on to re-tiling the bathroom and kitchen, both needing it tremendously, and Dave just hoped that once those rooms were done that he could relax a little and the place might look more like a home.

The garden was getting on his nerves though. It was completely dead, and not only was it simply not nice to look at, but it was simply depressing. It felt wrong to look at it. He didn’t quite understand why it had such an effect on him, as if he was looking at his own hard work ruined. It was quite ridiculous; Dave had never even had a garden. He hardly knew how to do it, nor had he really cared much about it, either. 

Someone had, though. Obviously someone had once tended to this garden with care, and it must have been thriving once, and it was a shame to see it now; dead and dark, patches of plants stomped into the ground or just completely wilted away. Of course it would take a while to bring it back to something close to what it might have once been, but he would try.

“Getting there,” Dave says to Ben. “Getting there. I like it up there, though. It’s nice.”

Ben hums. “I’ve been up around the cliffs – it’s relaxing. But you’ve got to check the beach out at some point, too. We do a lot down there – there’s a bar, and we do boating, too. You’ve got to try it if you live here.”

Dave ponders the idea for a moment before nodding his head. “Sure,” he says. “Why not. I honestly can’t remember the last time I was at a beach,” he admits. Scouring his memories, he rests his chin on his hand and purses his lips. He had probably been a child the last time he’d left the city, honestly. He had seen it in pictures on the background of his laptop, if that counted. 

“Tragic,” says Ben, clicking his tongue. Something else sits on the tip of his tongue, but before he can say it the door to the café opens, hitting the chime above it, and they turn to look at the customer walking in; Dave is only a little surprised to see a kid waltzing in by himself. Ben gives Dave a smile and a nod, and as he slips away to go to the kid, he says, “find Luther!”

Dave’s lips quirk in a small smile and he turns his attention finally to his breakfast. He only manages to focus on it for a couple of minutes before the chair opposite him is pulled out and someone plops into it. When he looks up, he sees the kid from earlier. He covers his mouth, hurrying to chew, and the kid just keeps staring at him.

“You’re new here,” he states, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms over his chest. 

“Uh,” Dave says intelligently, swallowing. “Yeah.” He can’t see the kid’s parents anywhere. “I’m Dave.”

“Five.”

“Five?”

“Yes.” 

Dave blinks. The kid stares at him; looks him up and down. “Can I… get you anything?” Dave asks. 

“Black coffee, for the kid.” Ben is suddenly there, sliding a coffee along the table in front of Five, who wraps his hands around it gratefully. Dave, looking between the two of them, pauses and then says,

“I’ll get it for him.”

Ben quirks an eyebrow at him and the kid watches him pull his wallet out to pay for his coffee. “Thanks,” he says, offering a small smile before he sips his coffee.

“Don’t mention it. But, uh, where are your parents?” He asks, curious. Five hums, gaze flicking away.

“Paris, I think,” Five says, thoughtful, then he frowns, eyes narrowing slightly. “Or maybe Rotterdam. I can’t remember.” 

Dave’s eyebrows raise. “Are you here alone?” He asks, shocked, and Five waves one hand to dismiss him.

“Don’t get so worried, it’s normal,” he tuts, sips his coffee again – and a black coffee? The kid can’t be older than fifteen at a push.

“How old are you?” He asks, frowning.

“Thirteen.”

“And you’re alone?”

“And you moved into the shitty house on the cliff, right?”

Dave blinks, only even more shocked. A smug smirk grows across the kid’s face and he sinks back in the chair, nursing his coffee. “Uh, yeah,” he murmurs. “A few days ago.” 

Five hums in acknowledgement. “Someone had to,” he muses with a shrug. “It’s not got a good track record of being a very nice place to live, though.”

“So I’ve heard,” Dave murmurs, frowning. “I think it’s nice.”

“To each their own,” says Five. He swirls the coffee in his mug before finishing it off and setting the cup down and rising to his feet. He grabs his jacket from the back of the chair, swiftly pulling it on and then he pauses, lingering. “Thanks for the coffee, Dave.”

“Uh, yeah… no problem,” Dave says, still thoroughly confused by the entire exchange. Five leaves the café without another word, leaving Dave reeling in his seat as Ben comes over to take the kid’s dishes away.

“Should he be alone?” Dave asks, looking up at Ben who smirks a little.

“That’s Five. He’s perfectly fine, trust me,” he says. “His parents are out a lot with their work and just leave him here. Honestly? I can’t remember the last time I saw them here. Poor kid’s used to it by now, but he gets on just fine, and Grace tends to check in on him a lot.”

Dave presses his lips together. He doesn’t know who Grace is yet, but at least someone is looking out for him. “Is Five his real name? Who’d call their kid a number?”

“Oh, no, it’s not, but he won’t tell us his real name,” Ben snorts. “Five’s a nickname. Might as well be his real name, though.”

“And coffee?”

Ben plucks the mug up with a grin. “Yeah, he’s… odd. But he’s a good kid. Genius, too, trust me. If you asked me, he should be out at one of those schools for gifted kids, but he kicks around here. Probably doesn’t need to go to school, to be fair.” Ben shrugs. “We all look out for him here, though. He’s alright.”

Dave nods his head, relieved but not much less shocked by the whole encounter. Ben simply smirks at him before whisking off elsewhere in the café, and in a little daze Dave returns to his breakfast. He hasn’t seen all that many kids around Five’s age, and he thinks it must be rather lonely to live out here by himself, with parents that apparently just leave him and go elsewhere for apparently long periods of time.

Dave brings his dishes up to the front for Ben on his way out, offering the barista a quick goodbye, and then he begins the walk through town to track down the gardening shop. It doesn’t take him too long to find it, being somewhat near Diego’s shop, too, and when he enters it he is immediately hit with the earthy smell of plants and flowers and soil. 

The place is warm inside, decorated thoroughly with plants and furniture for gardens and porches, and the flowers are blooming vibrantly, thriving around him. 

Luther, he has been told, is best described as a gentle giant. Dave should have been prepared for that.

He finds him kneeling down, watering a little plant, and – well, even kneeling down Dave can tell he’s big, his shoulders broad and arms of his cardigan tight on him, but then he rises to his feet to greet Dave and he is, at the very least, a head over him, and Dave is not short. He blinks in surprise, then looks down at his hand he holds out for him. Luther narrowly managed to dodge hitting his head off a hanging basket of flowers beside him as he stood.

It is a great sight, he thinks, seeing someone so physically intimidating and towering being so gentle and caring with these delicate little plants. 

“I don’t think I’ve met you before,” he comments as Dave shakes his hand, shaking his head simultaneously.

“No, I’m new around here,” he states. “Just moved in a little under a week ago. Name’s Dave – Dave Katz.”

Luther smiles pleasantly at him, introducing himself. “It’s nice to see someone new around here,” he comments. “Livens things up a bit.”

Dave hums, dodging low-hanging basket. “I quite like it here already, but the garden needs… a bit of work. A lot of work, really.”

“Oh?” Says Luther. “Where are you staying?”

“House on the cliff,” he says, nodding his head in what he thinks is the direction of his house. At the statement, Luther lights up instantly.

“Oh, really?” He asks. “Yeah, the garden does need a bit of work, huh?” He chuckles softly, scratching his jaw.

“Just a bit,” snorts Dave. “I’ve heard you’ve been itching to get your hands on it.”

“God, I have,” Luther confirms. “There are pictures of that place in the library, and its garden used to be beautiful. It’s a shame it’s just been left to rot away like that.” He deflates for a moment, frowning and genuinely looking upset. “A lot of it’s dead, I think. Worth it just to pull most of it back out and start again, if you’re trying to get a garden like that, but there’s probably some I can save.”

“I’ve heard you’re also a bit magic with that,” Dave jokes, and Luther smiles softly, as if taking a moment to be proud of himself. 

“I’ll try my best,” he says, and within a couple of hours they both find themselves up on that cliff. 

Dave doesn’t know the first thing about gardening, but he helps Luther once the man gives him an easy to do task, and he gets stuck into the work. He’s right, of course; most of the plants are completely dead. Some can be salvaged, he thinks, trimming them here and there, but some shrubs simply need to be dug out. 

His fingers and hands ache with the tedious tasks of repeatedly stabbing a shovel or trowel into the earth and tugging on plants that have roots seemingly miles deep, but he thinks it will all be worth it in the end. It makes him feel a little better, too. Like he’s doing something right.

He also thinks he’s letting those little ghost stories get to him too much. It isn’t as if the house, a building, is approving of his actions to fix it up, but nonetheless something settles in his chest, something warm and pleased. Despite the pain and fatigue it brings him throughout the day, he is happy in the knowledge that it will look better afterwards. Look right, even. 

Well, definitely not immediately; it will take time to nurse the surviving plants back to health, but hopefully Luther can indeed work some of his green-thumb magic. 

Cleaning the place up does help to make it look a bit better already. It looks a little bare because of it, but much cleaner and more welcoming, rather than just having a ton of shrivelled, dead shrubbery around the place. Luther is very enthusiastic about the job, too; he hardly stops to eat or drink, only doing so because Dave reminds him and brings out some snacks and water for them. He talks with a light in his eye as he describes the effects of the wind coming over the cliffs on the plants and how to take that into account, and as they plant some new ones later into the day, Luther explains specifically a schedule to nurture them to the best of their abilities.

It’s nice to see people so enthusiastic about things; Luther’s face lights up, his eyes brighten, and he gestures wildly with his hands. For someone who looks like he ought to be a body builder, Luther is incredibly gentle when pouring out some seeds onto the palm of his hands, laying them in the ground and patting dirt over them. Dave wonders if he’s the kind of person to talk to plants, too – he thinks so, and it paints an endearing picture, honestly. He has been described as a gentle giant and Dave thinks that that description is spot on for him. 

With Dave not knowing much about plants or gardening, he really just goes by Luther’s opinion on what kind of plants would both survive well out there, not be too hard to take care of but also look pretty and fit the surroundings. He likely won’t remember everything he has told him about taking care of the plants, either, but Luther has a few leaflets and guides to help, and is more than happy to come take a look at them whenever. 

“You said the library has photos of the house?” Dave comments when they are sitting down inside, sharing some coffee and taking a break. Dave is half convinced he’s going to smell like soil and salt forever thanks to how long he’s spent outside. 

Swallowing, Luther nods. “Oh, yeah. A few framed pictures around the place; a lot of pictures of the town over the years,” he says pleasantly. “No pictures of anyone who lived there, though, as far as I’m concerned, but there’s probably records around. But, uh, yeah; real nice pictures, it wasn’t always so run down and a mess. Maybe you’ll be able to fix it up again.”

Dave hums, tipping his head to the side in thought. He can hear the waves in the distance, crashing up against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. His eyes stray towards the window, overlooking the part of the garden they’ve managed to get through today, at all the cleared grass and turned up soil and mounds of dirt from where they’ve managed to plant a few things. 

“There any ghost stories in the library?” He asks, curious, returning his attention to Luther.

“Huh?” He asks, eyebrows raising.

“I’ve heard nothing but ghost stories about this house since I came,” he says with a shrug. “Everyone’s saying I moved into some haunted house or something.”

“Oh…” Luther says, leaning back. “Well, you know; people like to make stories, and this has got the image to fit with people’s stories.”

“So no one’s been murdered here?” He asks. Luther looks a little shocked at that, but hurries to shake his head.

“As far as I’m aware, no. I think I would’ve known about that, though,” he admits, scratching the back of his neck. “I think people are just, uh… suspicious, since it’s been left alone for so long. People come up with stories for why, and since nothing actually happens…” Luther spreads his hands out. “Ghosts.” 

Dave hums, drumming his fingers along his coffee. “Fun,” he says. “Ah well, I was just curious. Diego seems all over it.”

Luther chuckles a little. “Diego likes to freak out new people. I’m surprised he’s not said worse about it.”

“He seemed nice,” shrugs Dave. 

“He’s nice, he’s just… like that.”

Dave bobs his head in agreement. “Like that,” he echoes, and Luther smiles softly. He sets his empty coffee mug on the dining table and then rises to his feet.

“Thanks for that – you rival Ben’s stuff – but I ought to go now. You need any help with it tomorrow, I’m happy to help,” he says, and Dave stands up to walk him to the door.

“Thanks, man. I’ve not the faintest clue about gardening; I wouldn’t have known where to start with this at all.”

“Happy to help,” Luther says with a smile, ducking his head as he steps outside. “Plus, it’d kill me not to help with this place.”

“So I’ve heard,” snorts Dave, patting him on the shoulder. “Seriously though, thank you. I’ll let you know if I need help.”

Luther gives him a last smile and a wave before chucking the last of his equipment into the trunk of his car and driving off down the road. Dave watches him go before heading back inside, eager to wash away the dirt under his nails and in the crevices of his skin, and so he heads up to the bathroom upstairs. 

After working all day out in the garden, it is incredibly nice to be able to run a bath and let the hot water soak into his aching muscles, warming up his still-chilled skin. The house is peaceful like this, when he can pear out the windows and overlook the little village below his house, the street lights glittering in the distance. If he were to open the window a little, and he leans forwards in the bathtub to do so, it lets in the distant sound of crashing waves, and he closes his eyes and lets the sound wash over him as he relaxes.

He still has plenty of work to do, especially in the garden, but he feels pleased with what he has done. A part of him is excited to be able to look back at the house in a few months and see the progress he’s made. Working on the house just makes him feel as if there are things he needs to work on; things that simply aren’t right, but it also makes him feel as if he’s doing the right thing and that he is heading in the right direction. 

With a smile on his face, Dave sinks a little in the water and lets himself be proud of the work he’s done. 

* * *

_There are lights on in his house._

_He watches from afar, settled on the ground with his toes curling into the long grass. Unkempt, overgrown; Klaus never would have let it get this bad._

_This happens every so often. Someone comes in and invades his and David’s house; tries to take it for themselves, tries to shake it up, rearrange it, destroy what he and David had poured all of their love into making, and none of them are ever David, in that life he promised to love him in._

_It has been terribly lonely, and his numbness now gives way to the fresh hurt of a wound picked open at the sight of someone else coming in to a place that isn’t theirs. He can see them in the windows; a faint outline of a man, and like always, there is a sliver of hope that – maybe, this time…_

_But it hasn’t been the case for so long, and maybe this is a curse for Klaus. If he cannot have David, then he will spend his time saving his memories, because that is all he has in this lonely world he is in._

_Klaus rises to his feet, moving unseen like a shadow around his house until he walks along the edge of the cliffs. With one look up at his house, he watches a light turn on in his and David’s bedroom; he can’t even keep their bedroom safe and private and untouched._

_His body aches with the loss of part of himself, and Klaus takes a step back and closes his eyes. Wind runs through his hair and a wave rushes to catch him, devouring and dissolving him in a spray of foam._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five is a bastard no matter the au and I love him for that.  
> Soft Luther talking to plants has given me life.  
> Dave is most certainly the kind of guy to die first in a horror movie


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise!

“This is it! What do you think?”

Eudora eyes the building in front of her for several moments, silent and unblinking, and her gaze flits around a little; looks the house up and down, then looks at the garden either side.

“Well… you weren’t lying when you said it needed some work,” she settles on, and Dave frowns at her.

“I’ve done some work on it already,” he defends, and Eudora’s face twists. 

“Huh,” she says, hands on her hips. Her gaze slides back to him, eyes narrowing a little. “It’s very you, then.”

“Really?”

She offers a shrug and then picks up one of her bags by her side. “Yeah, I guess. Plus, you’ve only been here a week.”

“Exactly, stop being so harsh on me,” Dave pouts, and goes to grab the other bag she brought with her. “I have a sofa bed pulled out in the living room for you, and the TV connection is a bit iffy, but it holds most of the time now unless it’s a storm, so it’ll be fine. Help yourself to whatever, you already know, make yourself comfortable. How was the drive?”

“There was an accident on the way up, would’ve been here an hour ago if not for that,” she sighs, shaking her head. Dave frowns, glancing back at her.

“Really? Huh, didn’t hear about that.”

“Eh, nothing bad, I think,” she offers, nudging him. “Come on, show me around then.”

Dave offers a smile at her and does so quickly. The place is still rather disjointed, furniture pretty bare - the study downstairs only has that old desk and chair in it and nothing else - but he’s proud of what he has done in the past week. It tickles something within him and a part of him can’t wait until he can look back in a few months and see the progress he has made then. She offers her opinions of the house, but Dave doubts that anyone could say something to make him regret his decision, even despite the age and wear of the house, or the way the stairs groan even after they’ve gotten off them and the odd chills in some room. It’s old, visibly so, and Dave likes it. He likes that he can see the history of the house and the remnants of other people that lived here. 

In the study, Eudora glances at the old desk. Dave had debated throwing it out, because it’s old and obviously hasn’t been taken care of lately and he wasn’t sure if it would be worth trying to restore it, but he hasn’t gotten around to it yet and he’s not sure he can quite bring himself to. It’s still standing, after all; it’d be a waste to throw it out just because it’s old.

Eudora, nosy as she is, attempts to tug open some of the old, stiff drawers, and only succeeds in working one open without risking the whole thing coming down on itself. It strikes Dave that in the week that he’s been here, he hasn’t bothered even trying to look in the drawers. 

Not that there’s likely anything to be there. The drawer Eudora pops open just reveals a deadly amount of dust. She closes it, nose wrinkling up, and then she shrugs at him; the study isn’t much of an interesting room, nothing to offer in it, and they move on quickly. Dave makes a brief mental note to check the other drawers, and then he leaves it be.

He and Eudora settle on the couch with coffee and the box of chocolates she brought him as a moving gift open between them. He tries to be subtle as his hand dives to the coffee chocolates there, but he’s sure Eudora notices - she probably bought him the box just because it had those in them. The television flickers in front of them occasionally, signal reliably poor up here, but Dave’s gotten used to it by now and hardly acknowledges the brief breaks in the movie they’re trying to watch whilst Dave catches her up to speed with the town.

“Who calls their kid Five?” Eudora asks, frowning at him, and Dave shrugs helplessly.

“Nickname, apparently, and he’s a nice kid, but… I feel like he stares right into my soul whenever I see him.”

“Maybe he does.”

“Maybe he does…” he mumbles in quiet agreement, head bobbing in a small nod. “I’m not going to think about that anymore. Anyway, we can go out for dinner and maybe you’ll have the pleasure of running into him then and you’ll understand what I mean.”

Eudora quirks an eyebrow at him, dropping another piece of chocolate into her mouth. “What, so I can tell you he’s a normal kid and you just don’t know how to approach children?”

“They’re small and scary,” defends Dave, pouting at the television screen and ignoring Eudora’s snort. The television flickers and cuts out once more, though after a few long moments, it doesn’t seem to be coming back to life any time soon and the static on the screen isn’t that entertaining to watch.

“Early dinner?” Offers Eudora, gazing back at him, and Dave sighs.

“Early dinner,” he agrees, turning the TV off. Gathering their stuff, Dave throws a brief glance out of the window, but the day is still nice and he just hopes that there won’t be any of the town’s surprise storms. Pleased, they head out. 

* * *

Dave tries to do most of his own cooking, so he doesn’t actually know of the best place to take Eudora to in the town, but he’s sure it can’t be that hard to find a place that looks decent with a menu that they both like.

Life doesn’t have a tendency of being so easy for him, however, and after over half an hour of wandering around and peering at menus, they still have yet to find a good place they can agree on.

He’s half tempted to give in and go to the beach and whatever seafood they have there, but he’s determined to avoid that for a little longer if he can manage it. 

Leaving the latest unsuccessful place, Dave sighs and scuffs his foot on the pavement. “Look, we’ve not tried this way,” he suggests, nudging Eudora down a new street. 

“You have no idea where you’re going,” she accuses, and Dave gives her a shocked look.

“Excuse me,” he says, “I know exactly where we’re going.”

“What street is this?” She asks, and Dave bites his lip, giving her a look. She returns with a smug one of her own.

“It’s good to explore,” he says, picking his head up. “Maybe we’ll find something funky.”

“Or we could just check out the beach,” she offers.

“And go for seafood? Nice try, devil.”

Eudora snorts, nudging his side gently, but nonetheless they continue down the street, eying the buildings either side of them in hopes of finding one that will offer them some food. In his search, Dave isn’t paying much attention to where he’s actually going, and he startles when he nearly runs into someone. Thankfully they were paying at least a little more attention than he was and they don’t both go tumbling to the ground. 

He whirls around with an apology already tumbling from his lips, though he pauses when he recognises the person.

“Oh, hey,” says Diego, steadying himself. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” he repeats, offering a smile. “Sorry about that, I wasn’t paying attention.”

Diego dismisses his apology with a wave of his hand, and then his eyes slip over to Eudora by his side, and he pauses, as if his whole body just froze up. After a moment, he looks back at Dave.

“You didn’t tell me you had a friend,” he comments, and Dave snorts.

“I like to imagine I have at least one, thanks,” he jokes. “This is Eudora. Eudora - Diego.”

Eudora offers a smile and receives that same brief pause from before, and she shares a look with Dave, who just shrugs. Diego had struck him as the kind of guy to be a smooth-talking player at first, sort of, but he seems to have been proven wrong, if he’s reading the situation correctly right now.

“Hey,” he says, lighting up, “you don’t happen to know any good places to eat around here? We can’t settle on one.”

“Oh?” Diego quirks his eyebrows up. “Yeah, yeah, sure, come on.”

Putting his full trust in Diego to not lead them back to a place they’d already dismissed, he and Eudora follow after him quickly.

“So, how do you two know each other?” He asks curiously, looking between them, and Eudora nudges Dave’s arm.

“Worked together for years before I finally convinced him to get out of the city and go somewhere nicer,” she says, taking full credit for the idea of moving. Which isn’t really wrong, but Dave would like to imagine he had also had a fair bit to say in the plan, considering he was the one moving. 

“I mean, I did do most of the work,” he murmurs, and Eudora gives him a dubious look.

“I had to phone the taxi for you because you wouldn’t even do that,” she says. Dave looks down at his feet.

“I don’t like talking on the phone,” he mumbles, only for Eudora to affectionately nudge him again. Diego waggles a finger between the two of them.

“So, are you two… you know?”

He and Eudora share a look. They were close, and had gotten asked this question many, many times before, and now it was just laughable. The closest they’d ever gotten was when Dave tried to make a move on her when he was still in the closet, even to himself, and that had been the most awkward moment of his life. Bless Eudora for sticking around after that. Not that she’s ever let him live it down.

Judging by the growing grin on her face, too, she’s moments away from tormenting him with that horrifically cheesy pickup line he’d used on her, so Dave jumps to cut her off before she can.

“No, no, no, we’re not - not at all. That’d be disgusting,” he says, jumping out of the way of her half-hearted smack. Diego gives them a questioning look, but his shoulders slump. “Just friends,” he reassures Diego and, just because he knows it will annoy Eudora, he adds, “but she is single, though.”

Sure enough, he receives another smack to his shoulder, but he’s not quick enough to dance out of the way of this one, and he yelps loudly.

Diego’s cheeks flush a little, but he sees the way he lifts his head up and puffs his chest out a little more. Before he can say anything about it though, he seems to reach the place he was bringing them to - thankfully  _ not  _ one of the places they’ve already looked at - and he stops outside of the doors. 

“Best place in town,” he says, gesturing to it. “The burgers are to die for, you’ve got to try them.”

Dave peers at the little menu on the wall outside, skimming over all the options before giving it his stamp of approval in the way of a pleased hum, and then Eudora leans forwards. Dave waits with bated breath to see if they can both agree on this place and, much to his utter delight, she seems to agree with the menu as well.

Turning to Diego, Dave grins and says, “sounds good, thanks - I never would have found this place.”

“I thought you knew where you were going,” Eudora quips, and Dave decides to ignore that for now. Diego snorts, taking a step back.

“Yeah, well, I hope you like it, I’ll see you around.”

He takes another step back, smile still on his face, so Dave pauses and says, “do you want to eat with us?”

“Huh?” Says Diego. He purses his lips, glances down at his wrist that doesn’t have a watch on it. “Well, I’ve got nowhere to be.”

Dave snorts, but Diego comes in with them. As they all sit down, he delves into some story about his day, exaggerating moments and drawing a laugh from them, and he seems to keep up an endless stream of pleasant chatter about any and everything, always grinning a little more when he successfully gets a laugh from Eudora. 

Half-way through their meal (Diego was right, the burgers  _ are  _ to die for) Dave realises he was completely wrong about Diego being any sort of player. Eudora talks to him and he trips over his words, and when she compliments him Dave fears that he will literally melt where he’s sitting. He puffs out his chest when telling a dramatic story about how he got the scar on the side of his head, but it couldn’t be any more obvious that he’s just trying to impress Eudora.

He’s going about it the wrong way - Eudora couldn’t care less about how manly Diego seems - but at least she seems to take it as endearing rather than annoying, so Dave wonders if Diego might actually have a chance here, because, much to his own shock, Eudora seems to actually actively be interested in what he’s saying. It’s subtle, but he knows her and can see all the signs - the main one being the fact that she hasn’t straight up dismissed him or let him down already. 

Humming curiously, Dave sips his beer and lets the two of them chat.

* * *

“You’ve only been here for a few hours and you’ve already got someone wrapped around your little finger.”

Eudora scoffs, rolling her eyes at him. “It’s not like that.”

“Were we watching the same Diego? He was, like, falling over himself in an attempt to impress you,” says Dave, getting another eye roll from her.

“It was cute - like a puppy bringing you a leaf and being impressed with itself.”

Dave laughs, nodding his head in agreement. “It was endearing. He’s a nice guy.” A nudge to her side. “Maybe you could talk to him again.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Dave holds his hands up innocently in the air. “Absolutely nothing. Just a friendly little chat, nothing more.”

“Mm, right,” says Eudora, watching him unlock the door as they slip back inside his house and flick the lights on. It’s getting dark out, the house all composed of long, angular shadows that almost makes a shiver run down his spine, but they disappear as soon as the lights are gone and the house looks as warm and inviting as it usually does for him.

“I’m surprised  _ you  _ haven’t made your move on him,” she says, and Dave coughs.

“What? No, nope. Not my type. We have vastly different types, ‘Dora.”

“I’m yet to see your type, other than  _ that  _ one guy-”

Cringing, Dave says, “we don’t talk about him.”

Dave isn’t a huge lover, and he’s perfectly fine with that. He’s had about two relationships in his entire life, one being when he was in high school with a lovely girl in an attempt to cover up the jokes about him being gay, and the other was - well, they don’t talk about him.

It’s not that he doesn’t  _ want  _ to be in a relationship. Eudora calls him a hopeless romantic at heart, and sue him if he likes romance stories and cliches and the idea of waking up to someone in his arms, of going on little dates and buying cute little gifts for someone, of adopting some kids and growing old with someone - he likes that stuff. He just hasn’t found the right kind of person to do any of that stuff with yet. Someday, he hopes, but not yet, and he doesn’t want to rush or force it. He’s sure that the day will come when it’s supposed to come, and he doesn’t want to try to force his ideal relationship on someone that simply isn’t that compatible with him. He’ll simply have to wait.

“Go try and see if the TV’s willing to work with us now,” Dave offers, hanging up his coat and kicking off his shoes. “I’ll grab us some drinks.”

By the time he wanders back into the living room with a couple of glasses of champagne and the bottle with him, Eudora’s gotten the television to cooperate with them, already flicking through Netflix. As the sky gets darker, turning the sea beyond the house to an endless pit of inky waves, he and her settle in for a movie night. 

When his head is buzzing pleasantly with alcohol and they’re hardly paying much attention to the new movie they just started, Dave decides to call it a night. He puts their glasses away, stumbling only once while he does it, and helps Eudora set up her bed for the time she’s here, giving her a brief reminder of where the bathroom and light switches are and that she can help herself to anything, gives her a quick hug to thank her for coming to see him, and then he retreats to his own bedroom.

Stripping off his clothes and changing into some pyjamas, he falls into bed, leaving the bedside lamp on and closing his eyes. He can hear the waves far from him, and it lulls him easily closer to the embrace of sleep, and he welcomes it eagerly.

* * *

The lamp is off and the bedroom is dark when he wakes up.

He’s all groggy, head full of cotton and eyelids refusing to open properly. He sits up, rubbing at his eyes and trying to figure out what woke him up, because, despite all his grogginess and how perfectly sleepy he had been going to bed, he does feel properly awake.

“‘Dora?” He calls, fumbling to turn the lamp back on, but it refuses to work. Whatever, his eyes adjust to the dark quickly enough, and he can see that he’s alone in his bedroom - especially when a flash of lightning briefly illuminates the room to prove just that.

Despite the way the day had been all clear, and the sky had still been clear when he’d climbed into bed, a storm seems to have rolled over them now. He fumbles to find his phone and find the time - past three in the morning now - and, with a groan, he flops back onto bed.

He can’t fall back asleep.

It’s like an itch beneath his skin, some unsettled anxiety stirring in his guts, and he sits up again. The bedside lamp still won’t turn on. The house looks so much less inviting in the dark.

He gets up, running a hand through his messy hair, and decides that he’ll just go and get a glass of water from the kitchen, and maybe check on Eudora to make sure she hasn’t suddenly died in her sleep, and then he’ll go back to his bed.

As he stands, he turns his head and looks out of the large window behind his bed, eying the storm and the dark outline of the cliffs and the raging sea beyond, and then he turns to the stairs.

And then he turns back around, heart leaping into his throat, because holy shit-

Someone is outside. Someone is outside, in the pouring rain and violent thunder, and they’re at the cliffs, and they’re  _ right at the edge. _

“Shit, shit, shit-”

He shakes himself out of his spot frozen by the window, whirling around and rushing out of his bedroom. He doesn’t bother putting on shoes or slippers, but he fumbles to yank his coat off the peg on the wall as he goes.

“Dave?” Eudora calls groggily from the living room, but he doesn’t waste a second. He pulls his coat on, throws the hood up, fights to unlock the door and throw it open, and then, without a second thought, he hurries outside.

The storm batters against him and he almost loses his footing, sliding in a patch of wet grass and mud but managing to regain his balance before he can fall. Barely heard over the sound of the roaring wind, Eudora calls his name from the front door.

He turns, and he runs around the side of his house. He hopes that maybe it was just his sleepy mind playing tricks on him, but the closer he gets, the more he can see that yes, there’s actually someone there, right at the pointed edge of the cliffs.

“Hey!” He calls, pushing against the wind to hurry forwards. “Hey, hey, wait! What are you doing?  _ Hey _ !”

Slowly, the person turns to look at them. They look unbothered by the storm, by the way the rain plasters their dark hair to their head, their pale clothes to their paler skin, standing out starkly against the inky sky. Their eyes, even at this distance, catch his and all the breath leaves Dave’s lungs and he freezes. 

They then look away, and he falls out of his trance and begins to hurry forwards again, yelling all the while for their attention, begging them to come back, to step back, and-

They jump.

Dave lets out a choked sound and runs the rest of the way up the cliff, trying to peer over the edge without being thrown over by the wind himself, but it’s too dark and he can’t see anything but he knows the way rocks jut out of the water below him like spikes and god, no one can survive that fall, and-

Someone grabs his shoulders and Dave whips around, startled, but it’s just Eudora. 

“Dave, what the hell are you doing? We need to go inside-”

“Someone - someone was here!” He cries, turning to look over the edge again. “They jumped! They jumped, Eudora!”

Eudora’s eyes widen and she looks at the cliff as if expecting to see the person suddenly there too. “Shit,” she says, voice stolen by a clap of thunder and flash of lightning. They both jump, and she grips him tighter. “We’ll go inside and call someone,” she tells him. 

Dave isn’t sure what good that’ll do, but it isn’t as if he can do any better. So, reluctantly, they hurry back inside, dripping wet and shivering, mud over their feet and up their legs. Dave’ll clean it later.

Their first priority is getting to a phone. They use Dave’s, the only one with a signal up here. Dave notices that the living room light is on now, chasing away those cold shadows.

Help can’t come until the storm is over. “Bullshit,” Dave mutters, pacing and dragging water around the living room. “I saw them - Eudora, they need to go out there now-”

“I know, I know,” she says, taking him by the shoulders and forcing him to stop. “But it’s too dangerous for anyone to go down right now - they’ll send out a boat and some people as soon as the storm’s over, and some people will come here too, but - we just have to wait it out.”

Dave drags shaking hands down his face. “Holy shit,” he mutters. “Holy shit - fuck, I couldn’t stop them-”

“You tried,” she says, squeezing his arms. “Dave, you tried. It’s okay.” She toys with her lip, looking towards the front door. “Look, help won’t come for a while. We need to get warmed up and dry, okay? And we’ll clean up all the mud and water in here, put our clothes in the dryer, and we’ll wait. Okay?”

It’s a plan, and Dave desperately needs that right now, so he nods. They take turns taking a shower and getting into dry, warm clothes, throwing their soaking stuff in the dryer, and then they both start cleaning up the trail of water and mud in the hallway and living room. There isn’t much else to do. 

The storm clears up, and Dave goes over what the person looked like again and again and again so he can tell the people what to look for. A boat goes out, people comb through the bottom of the cliffs. 

Two people come up to his door. They’re polite and kind when they ask him what happened and he tells them everything - waking up randomly, seeing the person, the person who is tall and has pale skin and dark hair and was wearing a light blue nightgown and has sad, sad green eyes - and then they look around the cliffs after sharing a look with one another.

Eudora’s forced a cup of tea into his trembling hands when they sit back down, just waiting to hear the news. Now that the adrenaline has run off, he just feels tired and horrified and in shock, and he can’t stop shaking despite the fact he’s warm and dry now. 

The woman and man come back in the house, mud on their shoes. 

They found footprints, of course. In the mud, because of the storm.

They found Eudora’s, because they match her shoes, and match the way they followed Dave’s trail of footprints, up to the edge of the cliff, which is untouched. 

No marks, no footprints, as if they were the only ones there. 

The radio on the man crackles before turning to a voice, reporting,  _ no body. No traces of a body. _

Dave thinks of pale skin and sad green eyes. He never did get that close to them; they jumped before he could. Nonetheless, he knows those eyes were green. He knows that person was there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby :(


	6. Chapter 6

They put out a notice about the supposed suicide, of course, but days pass and no one comes forwards with any knowledge of someone matching the description of the person Dave saw that night - not someone who lives here, not someone’s friend or relative, and not even a tourist or random stranger. There are still no signs of a body or even any torn up clothes washing ashore, nothing to hint that someone jumped off the cliffs at all. Eudora stays a little longer than she intended to in an attempt to offer some comfort to him and help him settle down, because he can’t get the image of that person from his mind, can’t stop reliving the moment they turned and jumped and disappeared.

And they did. They just disappeared. He doesn’t like to think about it like that, because he knows what he saw on the cliffs that night, but there is no evidence at all to suggest that it had been real. There were only his and Eudora’s footsteps in the mud, there was no body, no missing person - nothing. And he had just woken up, probably from the thunder, and it could have been his tired mind playing tricks on him. 

It’s the most logical explanation, and, begrudgingly, he accepts it. Plus, it gets easier to deal with, thinking that he had just been half-asleep then and completely made it up, rather than having the knowledge that he hadn’t been able to save someone weigh down on him constantly. 

Eventually, Eudora leaves. She can’t stay forever, of course, and stayed as long as she could before she’d have to go back for work, and so he walks her up to the train station and hugs her goodbye, and watches the train carry her back home. She promised to come back when she could, and promised to video-call him later as well, and Dave had teased her about calling him after calling Diego. She hadn’t found that funny like he had, but he’ll be damned if he’s not going to tease her about this little crush.

As the train disappears from his view, Dave sighs, and then he twirls around and begins walking back into town. 

It’s a nice day today. The sun hangs high in a clear blue sky, warming his skin with a gentle touch, and despite the fact that he’s alone now since Eudora left, he’s in a relatively good mood, especially in comparison to the haze the last few days have been.

The town went on unaffected by the apparent suicide, save for the odd looks thrown Dave’s way, though he can’t exactly blame people for that. He tries not to pay too much mind to it, although sometimes the looks feel less like pity or curiosity and more as if they are watching a freakshow or a train crash. Those looks annoy him more, but he’s probably just imagining it. 

He doesn’t have many plans for today. It might take him a while to feel comfortable being alone in his house again, and he’s conflicted on whether or not he should avoid it altogether and delay the inevitable, or if he should just push past his anxiety and spend the day relaxing at home without Eudora around. Some peace might be nice, plus, he wouldn’t have to deal with all the odd looks he gets if he’s alone in his own home.

There’s always more work to do around the house, after all. He could just get on with that. 

He makes his way back through town, heading in the direction of his house sat atop the cliff. On his way, he decides to take a detour and stops by his favoured little coffee shop. He can’t help but feel a little relief at the familiar friendly face at the counter.

Ben greets him brightly, starts making him a coffee and when he drops it off at the table he’s sitting at, it’s with a pastry Dave didn’t order.

“On me,” Ben says with a smile that Dave can’t read, but one he hopes isn’t made of sympathy. Dave returns a tight smile of his own, curling his hands around his coffee.

“Generous,” he comments. Ben shrugs, hovering by his side. 

“Got plenty to give,” he states. “How’ve you been?”

Sighing, Dave blows across the surface of his tea before taking a sip. “I’m sure you’ve heard all of the latest gossip concerning me,” he mutters, and it comes out more bitterly than he intended. Ben doesn’t seem offended, at least. He glances around the quiet coffee shop before taking a seat opposite Dave.

“You’re right,” he says, “but unless you want to talk about it, I’m not going to ask.”

Dave picks at the pastry Ben brought him out, lips pressed together. “Everyone thinks I’m insane,” he says.

“They don’t think that,” Ben offers, but Dave gives him a knowing look and Ben’s eyes skate to the side. 

“Yeah,” he mutters pointedly, stuffing a bit of the pastry into his mouth and staring down into the dark depths of his coffee. 

“Well, how are you doing after that?” Ben asks, his voice gentle. Dave can’t help but sigh again and his eyes slip closed for a second. Green eyes flash in his mind and he shakes the image away.

He’s not sure why those eyes haunt him so much, but he can’t get them out of his head. He can still feel the way rain had poured down onto him, feel how his feet had slid in the mud, how his heart had pounded beneath his ribs; how he’d made eye contact with the person in the cliff, and how their eyes had been so green and so sad, right before they’d jumped. He keeps reliving it when he falls asleep, when he steps into the shower, when he looks out over the cliffs.

He opens his eyes again and meets Ben’s gaze. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “I’m just a bit shaken up by it all.”

“I can imagine,” Ben says. He stands up again and Ben cringes at the way the chair squeaks across the floor. “Look, if you ever want to talk about anything, you know where to find me.”

He offers him a genuine smile, although it feels slightly forced on his face. “Thanks, Ben. I appreciate it.”

Ben squeezes his shoulder before he returns back to his counter at the front, busying himself with his work. Dave makes quick work of the coffee and pastry in front of him before he ducks outside. He’s not exactly eager to get home, but he’s not any more eager to run into anyone else yet.

He just needs a few more days to settle down and for the whole thing to blow over, and he’ll be fine. In the meantime, he’ll keep working on his house and keep himself busy.

With a plan in mind, it’s easier to get through the following few days. He keeps working on his garden, frequently making visits to Luther to ask him for advice or help. The garden is still obviously out of control, and it needs plenty of cleaning up and care to make it look somewhat neat, but he keeps up with it as best as he can and just imagines how it’ll end up looking in the future so long as he keeps up with it. It’ll be worth it in the end; he knows it.

He cleans his house and starts organising the decorations he brought here with him as well; adding a few small paintings around the living room, in his bedroom and in the kitchen; he puts some candles around the place, followed by random knick knacks he took from his apartment. It makes the house feel a little less bare and uninviting, and it excites him, a little; gives him ideas for more things he can do around the house to really draw everything together. 

Eudora sends him photos of things she finds in thrift shops back in the city, cheap and unique, promising to bring some back with her the next time she visits. Dave wonders when the idea of furniture and decorations began to excite him, but he can’t help it when he thinks of hanging up one of the paintings in the study.

It still feels empty and dull in there, with only an old desk left behind. Despite being worn down with age, it’s nice and he wonders if Diego could potentially help clean it up a little. Surely it wouldn’t be too hard.

It’s as he’s overlooking it that he comes back to the stuck drawers and curiosity floods him. Eudora only managed to yank one open and the rest are still stuck closed, and he can’t help but wonder if there’s anything left in them. The desk is old, obviously, and he wonders just how old it is, and how strange and yet cool it might be to find something from a previous owner in it, even if it’s probably unlikely. The drawer Eudora opened only had dust inside of it.

But he has nothing better to do, so he spends a while studying the desk, testing the drawers with curious tugs, and eventually he has to use a knife to pry them open.

One by one, he manages to get the drawers open, but each one just turns out empty, save for horrible amounts of dust and a spider that makes his heart skip a beat. He keeps going, though, even as his hope of finding something - anything - dwindles away, until there’s one stubborn drawer left stuck and struggles to crack it open. Tugging and jiggling it hardly does much, even when he uses the thin knife blade to slide it in the gap and try to pry it apart.

His nose itches with all the dust he’s unearthed, and for a moment he just sits back and considers giving up. He can call Diego and ask if there’s anything he can do to bring some life back into the old wood, and then he can figure out what else he could get to fill this room with. 

In a half-hearted, last attempt, Dave tugs at the drawer again; jiggles the knife in the gap of it, and-

It opens.

The drawer opens with a thud, bringing with it the distinct smell of even more dust that tickles the back of his throat, but Dave is mostly in shock at the fact that the drawer actually opened. He sets the knife on top of the desk, tugs the drawer fully out, and peers inside, not expecting to find anything.

It seems the drawer is full of surprises, though, because there is a little book there. He pulls it out and his fingers come back grey with dust, and he swipes away the coat of it on the front cover of the book, curiosity burning through him.

It’s small, like a little notebook or a journal perhaps. The leather cover feels worn and old beneath his fingers, wrinkled and aged, and the pages are delicate and stiff as he begins to open it. He expects to find a diary of sorts, or maybe even a journal, but as he turns the pages, he hardly sees a single word.

Each page is simply full of drawings.

They’re impressive, although Dave thinks they’re a little more than just that. Drawn obviously in pencil, he’s a little amazed at just how talented the artist had been, even on some of the rougher, unfinished sketches. Most of the drawings are of people - more specifically, of one person, a man with a strong jaw and nose and tousled hair who always seems to be smiling at least a little in each drawing. Others are of landscapes, and Dave quickly recognises them as the cliffs just outside his house.

He had been looking for something like this, something left behind by an owner years ago, but it’s still a little daunting to actually have that in his hands. This actually belonged to someone; someone who lived in the place he is living in right at this very moment. He wonders who they were - what their name was, and if they were the man in the drawings. 

After quickly skimming through it, he takes the book into the living room and sits down to take a better look at it, page by page.

There’s writing on the front one. It’s faded with age, but it’s still clear to read, even written in a slightly messy scrawl across the yellowing pages.

_ K _

_ I thought you’d like this. You’re always stealing paper from the workshop; maybe you can use this instead? _

_ D _

A gift, Dave realises. It makes something in his chest warm at the idea that he’s holding something that was precious to someone once upon a time. He wonders if the man in the drawings is the  _ D  _ or the  _ K  _ written on the first page, although he assumes that it’s the  _ K  _ who drew in it. 

They were talented, Dave thinks, idly flipping page after page. He doesn’t get tired of looking at the art, finding something intriguing about looking at it all; at knowing someone else had once held this, drawn in it, written in it; had handed it off from one person to another.

There are a few pages interspersed throughout where it’s obvious it was someone else’s hand behind the pencil. The sketches are rougher, more heavy-handed and poorly done, but it’s endearing. Plus, it gives Dave a better idea of who the other person is, although he can never conjure up more than a vague silhouette; a sharp jaw, short hair, wide eyes. 

_ Is this me? _

_ I thought that was obvious _

_ I love it _

The scribbled conversation makes Dave smile. Something in his chest aches.

Dave closes the book and sets it on his coffee table. Maybe someone could find more out about it - about how old it is, or when it was made. Maybe he could take it to the library. Hell, maybe the drawings and initials could help him find out who they actually were.

Or maybe he’s getting ahead of himself. The book is incredibly nice, but there’s nothing for him to actually do with it. He keeps it, because it feels horribly wrong to just throw it out, but otherwise he just lets it sit on the coffee table.

At night, though, he grabs it on his way upstairs and sits in bed, flipping gently through the pages again, reading the old conversations and memorising the portraits inside. It’s nearly full. The last ten or so pages that were used are full of half-finished, messy drawings; silhouettes, the beginnings of a portrait. One is of the beach; of a wide expanse of waves and a sun high in the sky and a glimpse of a boat. The last page is messier than the rest, and it’s a heavy, dark drawing of the cliffs. 

It makes something in Dave feel a little sick, so he closes the book, puts it on his nightstand, and goes to sleep. 

* * *

The library is warm inside and smells heavily of dust and old books, but it’s a welcoming smell, and Dave finds himself relaxing as he steps inside. It’s nearly silent, few people besides staff inside; he’d come just before it closed on a sudden whim to find out more about the book he found. He doubts they can do much for him today, or in general, but surely it can’t hurt to try.

Plus, he’s never even visited the library yet. For a town as small as the one one he lives in, the library is impressive; towers of books on the walls, a maze of bookshelves winding around the place, signs splitting the place up into genres and authors. There is a small room full of computers off to one side of the room, and plenty of little sitting areas dotted around in small clusters. 

He ought to come here more often, he thinks. He hasn’t got many books at his own house - and none that he hasn’t already read at least once - and maybe it would be good to find a few more to get stuck into.

For now, though, he just hurries up to the desk, the old book clutched gently between his hands. 

The woman behind the counter is small, dwarfed in a large jumper, with her brown hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and she greets him with a smile; sets down the pen she was writing with. “Can I help you?” She asks, her voice quiet as if to not disrupt the peace of the library around them. Her gaze falls to the book in his hands. “If you’re here to return something, I can take that off your hands-”

“Oh, uh, not really,” Dave says, and he suddenly feels foolish. He had just up and left his house with the sudden urge to know more about this book and its owners, and hadn’t really thought this through at all. What are the chances the library can actually help him find anything out?

He’s here now though; he might as well try. “I just moved here recently,” he says, and then he holds up the old book, “and I found this left behind… I don’t know, I thought - maybe you could tell how old it was? Or something… I’m not sure.” He brings one hand up to scratch at the back of his neck, offering the woman a sheepish smile.

“You must be Dave, then,” she says. Dave’s shoulders slump.

“I take it you’ve heard of me,” he says. 

“Small town.” She holds out a hand and raises her eyebrows. “Vanya.”

He shakes her hand and hopes she has heard of him because he moved here, rather than the incident a few days ago, although he knows it’s probably a mixture of both. She doesn’t bring it up at least.

“I can have a look at it for you,” she offers, eying the book again. “It’s late, though - if you’re okay with leaving it here, I can get back to you tomorrow if you come back? I can’t promise you’ll get much out of it, but I can try.”

“Sounds good to me.” It’s pretty much all he could have hoped for anyway. He hands the book over despite the way he feels a tightness in his chest as he does; he wishes Vanya a goodnight, and steps back outside. He’s not sure why he wants to know more about the book, but - well, it would be cool, he supposes. It’s simply fascinating to have something that once belonged to someone else, and it would be daunting if it was decades old - if it was older than himself. 

If not; he wasn’t confident that she would get anything out of it anyway. There’s no harm in trying, and he’s already handed it over now.

He starts the walk back up to his house. It’s a nice night, the sun sinking lower and lower on the horizon, a gentle breeze cool against his skin. The streets are fairly quiet and people don’t let their gazes linger on him for long anymore, which he’s incredibly grateful for. The setting sun casts long shadows on the ground and warms the place around him, bathes everything in a gentle glow, and he doesn’t feel so eager to get inside. 

He lets himself wander through the town for a while. He’s still getting used to the place, still has places he’s not gone down yet, and he wanders long enough that he finds a small park tucked away. There’s a garden area that looks like the children get to work on it, the fence nearby painted in cute little pictures of flowers and bees and small handprints. There’s a climbing frame, a set of swings, a slide and a few benches dotted around, and there are flowers growing all around the place.

At the back, where the plants grow denser and thin trees sprout out of the ground, there’s a little gap and a cobbled path. Curious, Dave follows it down, down, down. It seems like just a little trail through a small wood, and it’s nice just to walk along. No one else seems to be out here, and he can hear the rustle of leaves and singing of birds, and the air smells like fresh dirt and salt and the sound of waves gets progressively louder. Before he knows it, he’s stepping off of grass and onto sand, and walking out onto the beach.

He came down here with Eudora when she stayed, but otherwise, he hasn’t actually been around. There’s a diner further to his left with a small bar, and he makes a mental note of it; he could grab dinner there, since he’s already out and it’s getting late. For now, though, he’s content to just wander down the beach. It’s empty the way he heads, away from the dock and the restaurant and the main path that leads down to it. Waves lap up onto the sand, tumbling over one another, and sand slips into his shoes and he ends up just taking them off and carrying them.

The sea looks beautiful from his house up on the cliffs, and it’s just as beautiful down on the beach. The sun glitters gold across the waves, the sky reflecting a pink and orange blur on the water. He wishes he could go out on them, wishes he could swim out until there was nothing but the gentle lull of waves all around him and everything seems gold and pink. He thinks it would be beautiful out there, but even if he had a boat of his own to go out on, he’s not sure he’d be able to make himself do it. He’s always had an irrational fear of water. Walking along the beach and sitting down on the sand in front of it is good enough for him. 

As far as he’s aware, he’s always been afraid of water. He used to throw tantrums as a child when his parents tried to get him swimming lessons until they just gave up, and the few times he’s had to swim, or be in or near water, his heart starts pounding beneath his ribs and he can’t will himself to go any further than hip-deep. It’s taunting, now, when the waves look so peaceful and sound so nice, crashing onto the beach and nearby rocks, and how the sky reflects onto the sea and the horizon blurs somewhere between the two. 

For a while, he just sits there, lost in thought and watches the waves chase one another until something makes him sit up. He blinks himself out of his daze, coming back to reality to watch as someone wanders by the water, just enough to get their feet wet. 

For a moment, Dave thinks he’s hallucinating. He’s sure he would have noticed someone walking by, and he knows he was alone at this side of the beach; but he had been deep in his own thoughts and hardly paying attention to his surroundings.

Nonetheless, the picture just looks so surreal. The person holds their arms up as if afraid of getting them wet despite not even being knee-deep in the water. Water soaks the bottom of their dress, makes it cling to their ankles, and the rest of it billows around their legs in the breeze. They hop from foot to foot along the waterline, arms stretched out, then spin around to face the horizon. Dave wonders what it’d be like to see them dance. They kick their foot out, send droplets of water flying into the sky, and then they stand still and fold their arms around their chest and stand there for several moments. 

Then they turn around, look over their shoulder, and look directly at Dave, and the world freezes.

He can’t breathe, for a moment. His chest tightens and the sound of crashing waves turn to static in the shell of his ears, blending with the rushing of his own blood, and he can’t look away. Gold light traces their silhouette, lining the angle of their nose and their chin and their shoulder and the hand resting upon it, and it fights to be brighter than the glimmer in their green eyes. The blue of their dress stands out against the sky that seems to be on fire, blurred and out of focus behind them, like some uninteresting, insignificant backdrop in comparison to the person themselves.

Their lips spread in a grin, and then they twist around the world comes back into motion. Waves crash over the person’s feet as they head back up the sand, right in Dave’s direction. Dave can’t make himself move.

They come up to his side and sit down on the sand, knees drawn up a little.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” The man asks, and Dave swallows. It takes him a moment to realise that he’s talking about the sky, but Dave can’t make himself take another glance back at it; he’d have to look away from him to do that. Anyway, he can see it just fine in the reflection of his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says, because he can’t think of what else to say.

“It’s nicer out on the water,” says the man, head tipping to the side. He wraps his arms around his legs and props his chin on his knees. 

“I bet,” says Dave.

“Dangerous, though.”

“Huh?”

“Well,” he says, looking back at Dave from the corner of his eyes. “It’s unpredictable. You can never tell when it’ll change. It looks peaceful now, but who knows what it’ll be like in an hour.”

Dave glances up at the sky. “It looks clear, though,” he states. There are hardly any clouds in sight, and the few that are there are small and pale.

“For now,” says the man, letting his gaze slide back to the sea. “But it’s unpredictable. It can change so fast.”

“Well, I never really liked swimming anyways,” Dave says, and he isn’t sure why he’s telling the man this. But he just glances back at him and shrugs one sharp shoulder.

“Probably for the better, then.”

“Do you?”

He purses his lips, squints at the waves. “I did.”

“Why not anymore?” Dave asks. The man doesn’t reply for several moments.

“It can change so fast.”

Dave looks out to the sea. He honestly can’t imagine it getting bad out there, at least not anytime soon. It’s hardly windy, there are no dark clouds rolling in. If anything, he’d think it’d be the ideal night to go out on the water.

“Besides,” continues the man, stretching his legs out, “it’s just fine right here.”

Dave hums his agreement, and for a while, the two of them just sit there, watching the sun sink lower and lower, and pink and orange turns to purple and stars begin to push their way through.

“You should go now,” he says suddenly. Dave blinks, turning to watch as he stands upright.

“What do you mean?”

The man gives him a look. “You should go now,” he repeats. Dave scrambles onto his feet as he starts walking away from him, heading further down the beach and away from everyone else.

“Wait, what do you mean?” Dave asks, following them. He turns to face him and smiles, then he points out to the water, and Dave follows his finger to look out over the darkening waves.

“It can change so fast, you know. You ask such silly questions, sometimes.”

A wave crashes into one, and crashes into the next, and the next, and the next. Watching it, Dave asks, “what’s your name?”

There’s not a reply, and Dave turns back to look at him - but he’s gone.

He’s nowhere around, in fact. Not further down the beach or behind him or back where they came from. He’s simply gone, and Dave is left standing there alone. A wave crashes in front of him and the water reaches his toes.

Feeling suddenly cold, Dave spares a glance to the sky and turns back around and heads home.

* * *

He makes pasta for himself at home. It’s easy and quick to do, and he ended up not going to that restaurant on the beach. He tries to push the interaction with the man out of his head, but it clings to him, leaving him feeling odd and uneasy. 

He sits down in front of his television to eat, but he hardly gets five minutes into the show he was watching. The signal’s poor. 

It probably has something to do with the dark clouds rolling in across the sky and the wind that picks up until it howls across his windows.

The weather can change so fast out here, he thinks, standing by the window and looking out over the dark waves, listening to them pound against the bottom of the cliffs far below his feet. 

Dave draws the curtains shut, unwilling to look out along the cliffs tonight, and he goes to sleep with an odd feeling lingering in his gut that he can’t quite shake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A nice interaction for you all!


End file.
